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I 























































The Woman Who 
Trusted 


A STORY OF LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK 



BY WILL N. HARBEN 

> 4 


AUTHOR OF 

* ‘Northern Georgia Sketches,” “White Marie,” etc., etc. 


HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY 


PHILADELPHIA 


TH e library of ! 

CONGRESS, J 
Two Copies Receive d| 

APR. 15 1901 


Copyright entry , 

77laA.2.c,s?9A 

CLASS O-0(Xc. Noi 

CORY A. 


T23 
. V\ “ 2 . 1 3 Vf 


,<w ^ 


Copyright 1901 
By Henry Altemus 


AUTHOR’S NOTE. 

This story was originally published as a serial in the Saturday 
Evening Post , and is here reproduced by agreement with the Curtis 
Publishing Company, of Philadelphia. 




W. N. H. 


DEDICATED 


TO MY NIECE 


MISS NELLIE HARBEN KNIGHT. 



THE WOMAN WHO TRUSTED. 


CHAPTER I. 


HE store belonging to the cotton factory of 



* Dadeville stood on a hill away from the 
sound of the whirring spindles, the puff, puff of 
steam, and the monotonous jarring of the looms. 
The hillsides around the typical Southern store 
were dotted with the cottages of mill people. 

Jasper Burian, who lived in the old-fashioned, 
two-storied frame house in the town half a mile 
farther southward, was the storekeeper. Twice 
a year Jasper went to New York to select his 
stock, consisting of articles of general merchan- 
dise. He bought the produce of the farms near 
by, and shipped it to the larger cities. 

A man of fifty-six, he was somewhat broken 
in spirit and physique. The war had taken from 
him his fortune, his fine old cotton plantation and 


7 


8 The Woman Who Trusted 

his retinue of slaves. In their stead the war had 
given him blindness in one eye, an incurable 
wound in his right leg, and a rather morose dis- 
position. He was but a wreck of the once fine 
Southern gentleman whose courtesy and hospi- 
tality were known for miles around. 

Capricious fortune had left him with but two 
ambitions. One was that, by some unlooked-for 
turn of events, he might become a director in the 
mill. The other was that his son, Wilmot, twenty- 
eight years of age, who had been graduated at 
the State University, and had taken up the study 
of law, might distinguish himself in that profes- 
sion, as had his grandfather, Judge Wilmot Burian, 
of Savannah. 

The first ambition could now hardly be called 
an ambition for in secretly speculating in cotton 
“ futures ” Jasper had lost so heavily that he was 
forced to sell the greater portion of his factory 
stock, and no one but a considerable shareholder 
could hope to be made a director. 

This disappointment in itself was hard enough 
to bear, but when the first term of District Court 
had ended, after the admittance of his son to the 
bar, and Wilmot had not secured a single case, 
the storekeeper began to fear that even his last 
hope might never be realized. He went into 


The Woman Who Trusted 


9 


Dadeville one morning, called on Mr. Thornton 
Bivings, the old lawyer under whom Wilmot had 
studied law, and frankly asked if Wilmot was 
likely to succeed in his profession. 

“I think,” answered the lawyer, “that he 
would do pretty well if he could be made to care 
more for it; he has a good head, Mr. Burian — a 
good head for law, but I don’t somehow feel that 
he is exactly cut out for it. This office, for in- 
stance, may be full of lawyers discussing impor- 
tant decisions, and Wilmot will be as quiet as 
dormouse ; but let the conversation drift on to 
literature, the writings of the old poets and mas- 
ters of prose, and he will fire up like an arc lamp 
under a current of electricity.” 

That night after supper Jasper Burian rose to 
follow his son to his room. 

“Where are you going ?” asked Mrs. Burian 
from her working-table. 

“Upstairs to see what that boy is doing,” 
was the short reply. “ I want to find out why he 
sits up so late. The watchman at the mill told 
me he could see a light in his room every night 
till past twelve o’clock.” 

“I don’t believe I’d bother him,” said Mrs. 
Burian ; “he is usually busy with his books and 
writing.” 


IO 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ What kind of writing?” Burian paused, his 
hand on the railing of the stairs. 

Mrs. Burian bent over her needle-work. She 
had already satisfied her own curiosity in regard 
to her son’s nocturnal employment by surrepti- 
tiously looking over the carefully written sheets 
of manuscript which he usually left in his table- 
drawer during the day. 

“I think,” she said reluctantly, “ that he may 
write things now and then for that little paper, 
the Echo. He had a letter yesterday from the 
editor.” 

“ What kind of things does he write ?” asked 
Burian in a tone of blended disappointment and 
contempt. 

“I think they are little stories, I’m not sure.” 

“I know they are, mamma,” broke in Laura 
Burian, a girl of seventeen, as she entered the 
room. “ He never would show me anything, but 
one day I saw a short story in the Echo , which 
sounded so much like brother that I asked him if 
he wrote it. He got mighty red in the face and 
said that Harold Carrolton was signed to it. 
Then I pretended to believe he hadn’t written it, 
and told him I was glad it wasn’t his, as it was 
the poorest piece in the paper. Then he looked 
so serious I knew I had caught up with him.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


ii 


With a grunt of disgust Jasper Burian turned 
up the stairs. What he had heard angered him. 
He was not a great lover of books in general, and 
with novels he had little patience. He had, in 
all his life, met but one writer of fiction. She 
was the sister of the editor of the County Head- 
light, a very unattractive old maid, who invariably 
made the deeds of her ancestors the motive for 
her thin sketches and burthened her work with 
the trunk, roots, and branches, of her family tree. 
Jasper had known a dozen people who had ceased 
to support the paper because of the space her 
endless creations occupied in it. That his only 
son should ever become such an imbecile had 
never before come into his mind. 

He entered Wilmot’s room rather uncere- 
moniously. The young man’s face appeared 
strange in the white light of the German student 
lamp; he looked tired; dark rings were under 
his eyes, the black pupils of which seemed to 
gleam unnaturally as he raised them from the 
manuscript before him. 

“What is it, father?” he asked. 

Burian advanced, laid an unsteady hand on 
the edge of the table, and looked down into his 
son’s face. 

“I have heard something I don’t like a bit,” 


12 


The Woman Who Trusted 


he blurted out. “ Your mother and sister tell me 
you write stories for that paper, the Echo.” 

The young man clasped his hands behind his 
head and leaned back, smiling good-naturedly. 

“I don’t write many for it ; the trouble is the 
editor won’t accept them often ; it is only now and 
then that one proves good enough.” 

“ Does he pay you ? ” 

The eyes of the young man were lowered to 
his manuscript. 

“ He doesn’t pay anyone ; he can’t afford it. 
He doesn’t charge me for the paper.” A faint 
smile played for an instant about Wilmot’s lips, 
then a sort of embarrassed twitching conquered 
it as the stare of his father hardened. 

“Well, what under the sun do you do it for?” 
was the missile discharged by the explosion of 
Jasper’s wrath. 

Wilmot always pitied his father when he saw 
him angry. The empty socket under the scarred 
brow was now red as blood ; Burian’s attitude of 
resting his weight on his sound leg and the com- 
manding tone of voice reminded Wilmot that his 
parent had once engaged in another sort of 
struggle than that of a writer. He rose respect- 
fully. 

“I suppose,” he said pacifically, “that it is 


The Woman Who Trusted 


13 


owing to my unconquerable love for writing. I 
like to see my things printed and to know that 
they stand a chance of being read by even a few 
appreciative people. I can’t help feeling that if I 
stick to it I may some day do much better work 
and perhaps earn something by it.” 

“And all the money I have spent on educat- 
ing you that you may make a use of your grand- 
father’s library will go for nothing — all the time 
you have read under Mr. Bivings is to be thrown 
away.” 

The young man’s tone when he replied was 
humble and gentle. 

“ I did not really know, to be frank, that I was 
so ill-suited to the practice of law till I was ad- 
mitted to the Bar. I begin to hope that I may 
really accomplish something in the profession of 
literature and that is why I am trying to educate 
myself to — ” 

“Educate the devil!” stormed the ex-soldier; 
as he left the room. “ Do you consider writing 
for a one-horse paper that can’t pay a cent for 
your labor educating yourself? I’d be ashamed 
to talk such nonsense to a man as old as I am.” 


CHAPTER II. 


O NE Spring morning Wilmot received an 
important letter. 

He was at the post-office, surrounded by a 
crowd waiting for the opening of the mail. Two 
or three friends spoke to him, but he did not hear 
them, and their faces appeared almost as faces 
appear in dreams. He was experiencing a sen- 
ation that is felt by only a few mortals. He step- 
ped to the door of the post-office and looked out 
upon the long avenue which ended on a red hill- 
side beyond which rose a rugged mountain. 

He drew a deep, full breath, and as he stepped 
down to the pavement something within him 
made him feel as light as a balloon. At the cor- 
ner he met Mr. Bivings. 

“Any mail for me ?” the old man asked. 

With trembling fingers Wilmot sorted out the 
letters and papers addressed to the lawyer, keep- 
ing the treasure he had just received folded in his 
hand. 

'‘What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Bivings. 
You look excited.” 

“ Only a little piece of good news, that’s all,” 


14 


The Woman Who Trusted 


15 

answered the young man ; “ I’ll tell you about it 
later/' 

They parted. Wilmot, instead of going to 
the law office as usual, turned down the principal 
avenue of the town. He still felt as if his body 
were imponderable. He had an almost uncon- 
trolable impulse to stop and chat with the school 
children he met on the way, to tease the dogs 
which barked at him as he passed. 

Half a mile from the postoffice he came to an 
old-fashioned two-storied residence with a long 
balcony and Corinthian columns, a sharply sloping 
roof and small-paned dormer windows. It stood 
on a wide, green lawn, shaded by densely foliaged 
water-oaks. As he neared the gate he walked 
more slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the wide 
front doorway. 

She’d think it strange of me to call so early 
in the day,” he said to himself, '‘and yet she’d 
want to know, and I don’t feel like waiting till 
evening.” 

He paused, and stood hesitatingly at the gate. 
Then his heart bounded. He had caught sight 
of a figure among the rosebushes near the glass- 
roofed hot-house. He entered the garden. 

The girl turned as he approached. Her arms 
were full of roses : she laid them on a rustic 


1 6 The Woman Who Trusted 

bench to offer him her hand. She was tall and 
graceful ; her hair was a light brown that turned 
golden in the spring sunshine ; her eyes were 
hazel, long-lashed, and held a deep, dreamy ex- 
pression. 

“ You take me by surprise, ” she said with a 
welcoming smile. “ I thought you might come 
this evening, but — ” She paused, studying his 
face attentively, “ what has happened ? Oh, I 
know ; you have had good news ! You see how 
well I read your face. Tell me about it. Am I 
a good guesser ?” 

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, I have had a 
little literary success, and I owe it all to you, 
Muriel, for you have done more to keep my cour- 
age up than anyone.” 

“ Don’t talk nonsense, Wilmot,” she said, 
coloring a little as she sat down on the bench. 
She heaped the roses in her lap, and motioned 
him to sit beside her. “ You would have gone on 
writing if the whole world had opposed it — it is 
in you, and will force itself out like confined 
steam ; but what news have you ?” 

He enjoyed her show of tender interest so 
much that he refrained from satisfying her cu- 
riosity for several minutes. 

“I have never confessed it before,” he began 


The Woman Who Trusted 


17 


presently; “ but about three months ago I stopped 
sending my stories to the Echo and began offering 
them to the standard magazines,” 

“And kept it from me, Wilmot,” exclaimed 
Miss Fairchild reproachfully ; “ I am awfully sorry 
you did not have sufficient con — ” 

Wilmot interrupted her with an apologetic 
motion of his hand, and a laugh. “ They kept 
coming back so systematically that I was really 
ashamed for you to know it.” 

“ I thought you were still trying to please that 
stupid editor of the Echo” said Miss Fairchild. 
“It always pained me to see your work there ; 
the paper has no circulation worthy of mention, 
and the editor never would pay you for your 
trouble.” 

“He stopped printing my stories even when 
I gave them to him,” answered Wilmot with a 
dry laugh. “ The last I sent him has been in his 
hands for two months, but I am now glad he did 
not take it, for it has just been accepted by the 
Decade , one of the best American magazines. 
They have sent me a check for one hundred 
dollars. 

“ Oh, I’m so glad! ” exclaimed the girl, as she 
took the open letter and the check from his ex- 
tended hand. When she had read them, she folded 


1 8 The Woman Who Trusted 

them together with almost reverent fingers. “ I 
know I am quite as happy over this as you are,” 
she said. “ I congratulate you with all my heart, 
but I really don’t quite understand how the editor 
of the Echo could still be retaining the manu- 
script, when the same story has been bought by 
the Decade .” 

“ Fortunately I had kept a rough draft of it,” 
explained Wilmot ; “and, as he would not 
answer any of my communications in regard to 
the story, I copied it off and offered it to the 
Decade about four weeks ago. This check is the 
result of my faith in the tale.” 

“ I should want the editor who ignored it to 
see it in the big magazine, and to see the check 
also,” said the girl, kindling. 

Then she paused, and neither spoke for a 
moment. “I suppose,” she presently continued, 
her face clouding over, “ that this success will de- 
cide you to give up the law, and go to New York. 
I don’t like to think of your leaving Dadeville, 
but I am certain that you could succeed up there.” 

“I feel a little more like it now, I admit,” 
answered Wilmot. “ I have had another letter 
from Chester. He refuses to advise me, but says 
that he is doing well, and that there is always 
room at the top. He likes you, and always men- 
tions you in his letters.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 19 

“ He is one of the nicest men I know,” 
answered the girl. “ He was kind to me while I 
was in New York. Oh, I do hope papa will 
consent to my returning this fall ! Madame 
Angier wrote him the other day that I was her 
most promising pupil. She said I had really a 
wonderful voice for the training I have had.” 

“ If only we could be there together,” answered 
Wilmot, “ it would be awfully jolly. I may throw 
up everything and make a break for Bohemian 
liberty ; this check may really be the pebble to 
turn the stream of my life.” 

“ Don’t call it a pebble, you vain boy,” laughed 
Miss Fairchild, “a check like that is not a pebble, 
even to professional writers. I know some of 
them and have heard them talk about prices for 
magazine work.” 

“ I don’t mean that,” he said quickly ; “ I 

assure you that I had rather have received it 
than—” 

“ Than to be made President of the mills, or 
sit on the Bench of the Supreme Court,” broke 
in the girl. 

“ My egotism extends that far,” admitted 
Wilmot. 

“ That’s the way to feel,” but what was the 
name of the story ?” 

2 — Woman Who Trusted 


20 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“‘The Fallen Idol’ — a simple tale about — ” 

“How remarkable!” interrupted Muriel. 
“There is a story in this week’s Echo by that 
title. I did not read it. I only glanced at the 
heading.” 

“My nom de plume was not signed to it?” 
Wilmot said, his face becoming rigid. 

“I don’t know; I did not look; I only saw 
the title. Have you not seen the paper ?” 

Wilmot shook his head. The hand which 
held the letter from the editor of the Decade was 
trembling. The girl wondered over the sur- 
passed tensity of his tone as he answered : 

“ He has stopped sending me the paper — 
have you — could I see it?” 

“It’s in the library; I’ll get it.” 

He glanced up the avenue; his heart began 
a prayer that what he feared might not prove 
true, and yet — 

The girl came out, gazing at the paper as she 
crossed the veranda. He fixed her with a steady 
stare as she approached. 

“It is mine!” he said huskily, “I see it in your 
face.” 

“The name was in such small type that it es- 
caped my notice this morning,” said she. “But 
does it really make any difference ?” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


21 


“It is everything to me,” he answered bitterly. 
“It completely annuls the acceptance from the 
Decade.” 

“You mean — ” The girl sat down by him, a 
perplexed frown wrinkling her high brow. 

“The editor of the Decade has bought it with 
the understanding that his magazine alone will have 
the use of it. If he had known that it has ap- 
peared elsewhere he would never have taken it.” 

“ Can nothing be done, Wilmot ? Oh, I am 
so, so sorry !” 

“Absolutely nothing, Muriel. It is likely that 
he’d never see it in the Echo (and if I were dis- 
honest I could let him publish it in his magazine), 
but it is plainly my duty to return his check with 
an explanation.” 

The girl gazed fixedly at him for a moment. 

“ I have never been so strongly tempted to 
give bad advice,” she said. “It seems too hard ; 
it is cruel, cruel ! It meant so much to you. A 
moment ago you were all aglow with hope and 
enthusiasm, and now — Oh, it’s too bad !” 

“ I may never have another opportunity so 
good,” Wilmot answered. 

“You must continue to work on your novel,” 
said the girl, consolingly. “I have so much faith 
in it ! Do you know the characters and their ac- 


22 


The Woman Who Trusted 


tions follow me everywhere. I can’t keep them 
out of my mind. Its going to be a strong story 
— a very strong story !” 

His heart sank as the thought came to him 
that she was trying to make him view his defeat 
as something other than it was. 

He rose, smiling mechanically. “ It is awfully 
sweet to have you comfort me, Muriel. Do you 
know you — it seems to me that you are the only 
really true friend I have. Everyone else throws 
cold water on my plans and hopes.” 

“ I understand.” She said it with tightening 
lips. 

She accompanied him to the gate. Her face 
still wore an anxious expression. He knew she 
was taking no thought of herself by the heedless 
manner in which she pressed her fresh-cut flowers 
to her side. He opened the gate and gave her 
his hand over the fence. 

“ I shall return the check to-day,” he said. 
“It’s just my luck, Muriel; don’t bother about 
me. I am not worthy of it.” 

“ Oh I’d like to talk to him — to give him a 
piece of my mind !” she suddenly exclaimed, and 
he noticed that a rebellious fire had kindled in 
her eyes. 

“Whom do you mean?” he asked absent- 
mindedly. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


2 3 


“ The editor of that paper — the man who 
accepted your work without a word of apprecia- 
tion, and now stupidly steps between you and 
your first success.” 

“I really can’t blame him,” answered Wil- 
mot, gloomily. “I was glad enough to have him 
publish my work. Perhaps he thought he was 
doing me a favor — he may really have pushed my 
story in ahead of some other hungry aspirant. 
The fault was mine ; I ought to have written him 
that I intended to offer the manuscript elsewhere.” 

“I suppose you will let him know of its 
acceptance by the Decade , Wilmot.” 

“It would do no good ; I was in his office 
once and he showed me a great pile of manu- 
scripts which he considered good enough for his 
purpose. He said he was getting about twenty 
letters a day urging him to bring out accepted 
stories. I am sorry for him ; he looked as if he 
were so hard-worked that he could not positively 
judge the merits of a manuscript. Good-bye. I 
shall come to see you soon — when I have had 
time to brace up.” 


CHAPTER III. 


S MURIEL was going slowly back up the long 



** walk bordered by blooming rose bushes, 
she saw the tall figure of her mother appear on 
the veranda, holding a watering-pot in her hand 
and sprinkling some of the flowers which were 
grouped in rustic boxes on a stand. 

Mrs. Fairchild put down the watering-pot as 
her daughter approached. 

“Who was that, dear?” she asked. “I have 
left my glasses up stairs.” 

“Wilmot Burian, mother.” The girl ascended 
the steps, put her roses on a window-sill and sank 
despondently into a big rocking chair. Mrs. 
Fairchild drew a deep breath. It had vast mean- 
ing, and the eyes of mother and daughter failed 
to meet. Mrs. Fairchild took another deep breath 
— it was almost a sigh — then she said impulsively : 

“Daughter, I must talk to you — you simply 
must listen to me. I have your interest always 
at heart. I would not say anything but for your 
good. You must not get angry — you must 
listen.” 

“I am listening, mother.” An expression of 


24 


The Woman Who Trusted 


25 

deep pain had taken possession of the beautiful 
young face. 

Mrs. Fairchild put down the watering-pot and 
placed a chair near Muriel. “I don’t want you to 
imagine, dear, that I do not like Wilmot. I think 
few people who know him can fail to feel drawn 
to him, but, dear, it is a mother’s duty not to 
allow her daughter to fall in love with a man 
whom it would not be expedient for her to marry. 
It is really the talk of the town about what a fail- 
ure he has made of his profession, and — ” 

“I know that,” broke in Muriel; “but he is 
not the first young man to take up a profession 
that is not congenial to his tastes or talent. He 
has strong hopes of becoming a writer.” 

“ Well, to say the least of it, he is not acting 
honorably to pay attention to a marriageable girl, 
with so much uncertainty before him.” 

“ You needn’t be troubled on that score, 
mother,” answered Muriel bitterly. “We have 
come to a clear understanding already. He 
would never think of marrying for a very long 
time to come. He said he was too poor a lawyer 
to support a wife, and he has not made a start in 
anything else.” 

“ Muriel, you know as well as I do that he is 
in love with you.” 


26 


The Woman Who Trusted 


A flush half of pleasure, half of annoyance 
rose in the girl’s face. 

“ He has never mentioned such a thing to me 
in his life,” she said in a low tone. She took up 
her roses and began to arrange them. 

“ That may be, Muriel, but he is in love with 
you, nevertheless. I can see it in his face. 
When he mentions your name, he even — but 
what is the use to argue with you about what you 
know is true? ” 

“ Go on, mother ; do tell me what you started 
to say.” Muriel seemed to forget everything in 
her eagerness. She leaned towards her mother 
and stared into her face. You must tell me, 
mother ; do you really think he cares for me ? 
Do tell me. You were a girl once. You know 
how a girl feels. Do you think he cares for me ? 
Sometimes I am afraid he is so wrapped up in 
his work that he does not think of me as — ” 

“ As fiddlesticks ! You know he is heels over 
head in love with you, and I am afraid that you 
have allowed yourself to become just as foolish 
about him. I don’t see what has got into your 
father. Surely he ought to see that you are mak- 
ing a goose of yourself and ruining all your 
prospects.” 

“ Mother,” cried Muriel quickly, a sudden look 


The Woman Who Trusted 


27 


of alarm in her eyes, “don’t mention this to papa. 
He is so hasty, so — it makes him so angry to 
think of my marrying anybody that — you know it 
might cause him to forbid Wilmot’s coming here. 
Oh, mother ! Remember how you felt once. 
Don’t make me unhappy all the rest of my life. 
I know what there is in Wilmot, and — and I shall 
never care for anyone else as long as I live. 
Mother, do let us alone. If you don’t you will 
make me very miserable.” 

Mrs. Fairchild shrugged her shoulders. Her 
daughter’s words and tone drew a look of tender 
sympathy into her sweet old face. 

“ I shall be acting very foolishly, I know,” she 
said, almost resignedly. “But I do believe you 
will be unhappy if I say anything more.” She 
stepped behind her daughter’s chair, drew the 
girl’s head backward and kissed her on the mouth, 
then she turned into the great hall, and went up 
the stairs wiping her moist eyes. 

As Wilmot entered the law office that morning, 
Mr. Bivings glanced up from the brief he was 
writing, and failing to catch the young man’s eye 
he turned in his revolving chair and looked at 
Wilmot, who seated himself at his own desk, and 
began to take from his drawer some sheets of 
legal-cap paper. 


28 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“Well,” said the lawyer, “you have actually 
roused my curiosity, so you have. Ever since 
you mentioned your good luck up-town I have 
been puzzling my brain to make out what has 
happened. I presume Hilkins has given you the 
case after all.” 

“ It was nothing pertaining to the office,” an- 
swered Wilmot, for the first time remembering his 
meeting with the lawyer that morning. “ And 
after all, it turns out to be a mistake. I had sent 
a story to one of the most influential magazines in 
the country. The editor accepted it and sent a 
handsome check, but I find that the story has 
been printed elsewhere and I shall have to return 
the check and explain.” 

“ Humph ! ” Mr. Bivings turned back to his 
work, a look of disappointment on his face. 
“ That’s all, eh ? ” 

“ That was all.” Wilmot leaned his elbow 
on his desk. “I am sorry I spoke of it. I had 
no idea you would think it was something that 
would throw business in our way.” 

The older man turned again in his chair. 

“Times are dull, my boy,” he remarked 
coldly. “ I thought if Hilkins had decided to give 
us the case that it would have been through his 
friendship for you, and it would have done a 


The Woman Who Trusted 29 

good deal towards satisfying your father and 
stopping the gossips in town who are continually 
speaking of your being the proverbial lawyer 
without a case.” 

“ Mr. Bivings,” said Wilmot. “ I want to 
say something to you. I want to be frank. I 
have made a mistake in going into the law. I 
did it because my father was so anxious that I 
should do it, but I see my blunder. However, I 
am not a dead man yet. I have had a great 
disappointment to-day, but even that is over now. 
I believe I can succeed in a profession I like 
better than the law, and I am going to do it. 
Nothing is worth having that does not come 
through toil of the severest kind, and I am going 
to work and win.” 

“You mean that you are going to quit me?” 
asked the old man in surprise. 

“I think I ought to. I am doing no good as 
it is.” 

“ But the clerical work you do for me is a 
great help,” said the lawyer. “I really can’t do 
without you just now.” 

“ Oh, I’ll stick to you as long as you wish,” 
said Wilmot. “I shall not go till you have some- 
one who can fill my place to your entire satisfac- 
tion.” 


30 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ I hope you’ll stick it out two months longer 
anyway,” said Mr. Bivings. “A nephew of mine, 
young Martin, is coming then, and he can take 
your place.” 

“ It would really suit me better to remain 
till then,” replied Wilmot, and both men applied 
themselves to their respective work. 


CHAPTER IV. 


IT WAS a warm evening in July two months 
* later. As Wilmot started down the avenue 
to the Fairchild’s, all nature seemed rebelling 
against sleep. The katydids were shrilling loudly 
in the trees, frogs were croaking in the marshy 
places and many dogs in various directions were 
giving long-distant greetings to one another. 
Wilmot heard a negro picking a banjo in a cabin 
setting far back from the street in a grove of 
cone-shaped cedars. The air was laden with the 
perfume of flowers. 

As he crossed the lawn at the Fairchild home- 
stead he saw, through the open windows which 
extended to the level of the floor of the veranda, 
that the lamps in the old-time drawing-room were 
burning under their big colored silken shades. 
As he neared the house, he saw Muriel seated at 
the piano. 

Often, under such circumstances, he entered 
at a window, not wishing to disturb her by ring- 
ing. But he paused on the veranda and feasted 
his eyes on her in the pink light of the piano- 
lamp. She was running her hands idly over the 

31 


32 


The Woman Who Trusted 


keys, absently as if her thoughts were far away. 

“I wonder/’ said the young man to himself, 
“how long it will be before I shall see her again. 
It would be an awful thing if we were never to 
meet after I leave.” 

It was as if she had divined his presence 
for she turned on the piano stool and looked 
towards the window. He laughed as he entered 
and stepped across the thick carpet. 

“Why did you stop playing?” he asked. 

“I think I knew you were there,” she ans- 
wered. “I am so glad you came to-night. 
Mother and father have gone to another church 
affair.” She looked about the room. “It is 
warm here, will it not be pleasanter outside?” 

“Decidedly,” he answered. He held the 
heavy lace curtains aside for her to pass through 
the window, and then he followed her. After 
they were seated in a sort of bower of honey- 
suckle vines at one end of the veranda, he said : 

“I want you to take a good look at me, weigh 
the tone of my voice, if you like, and tell me if 
you notice any marks of undue excitement about 
me.” 

She echoed his light laugh. 

“ You are in a joking mood,” she said. “ You 
have been amused over something. What is it ?” 

“ I have been intensely excited all the after- 


The Woman Who Trusted 


33 


noon,” he said. “ But I have been doing every- 
thing in my power to calm myself before meeting 
you. The last time I was greatly excited you 
threw cold water on my enthusiasm by showing 
me that there was not the slightest excuse for it, 
and now before telling you my news I want to be 
prepared for your cold douche. Have you got 
it ready ?” 

“ Really, what do you mean ?” 

‘‘You remember, Muriel, when I came to you 
in the Spring and told you the Decade had accepted 
that story, that you showed me a copy of the Echo 
containing my death sentence?” 

“Yes, but — oh, the editor of the Decade has 
taken another !” 

“No; guess again.” 

“I can’t guess when my curiosity is burning 
me up. What have you to tell me ?” 

He held out his wrist and laughed again. 
“ Feel of my pulse. I want to be satisfied that 
my temperature is normal and that my heart beats 
as it should.” 

“ Wilmot, don’t be silly !” 

“It is about the novel,” he said. “Welling- 
ton and Clegg, of New York, have read it. They 
like it. They are going to commit financial suicide 
and bring it out.” 


34 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ For a moment she said nothing. Then she 
put out her white hand and he clasped it between 
both his own. 

“Oh, I am so glad !” she cried. “ I knew it 
would come. I had unbounded faith in the book. 
It will make you famous — remember what I have 
said. It will make you famous !” 

“ I owe it all — whatever it amounts to — to 
you, Muriel,’ ’ he said in a voice that quivered so 
much that it was unlike his own. “You have 
compelled me to believe in myself. Everybody in 
this town has laughed at my literary pretentions 
but you. The book may fall flat. The critics may 
tear it to pieces, but the writing of it has helped 
to make me stronger, and if I remain a poor man 
all my life, the time I spent on the book will not 
have been thrown away.” 

He raised her hand towards his lips and 
bowed his head as if to kiss it, but she gently 
drew it from him. 

“You must not do that — happy as we are,” 
she protested softly. 

“Forgive me, Muriel,” he said. “I forgot 
myself. I feel so grateful.” 

It looked as if she partially regretted her 
action, for she leaned her head on her hand and 
looked at him all but tenderly. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


35 


“You know you said that we must not think 
— that we must not hope to be more than friends, 
and what you were about to do would not have 
been right — as we are situated.” 

“You are right,” he answered. “I must con- 
fess that it drives me wild to think of your ever 
being another man’s wife, but your mother and 
father are acting wisely from their point of view. 
I am not worthy of you, and since they understand 
that we are to be only friends we must respect their 
confidence in us. But it is awfully hard. They 
will have little to worry them in the future. This 
will be my last visit for a long time.” 

The girl drew her hand from her face, and 
stared at him questioningly. 

“ You are going away ?” 

“ In the morning.” 

“In the morning? Oh, surely you do not 
mean that !” 

“Wellington and Clegg wrote me that they 
would like to have a talk with me about putting 
the book on the market, particularly in the South, 
and I thought I might as well make the plunge 
and be done with it. I can leave the office now. 
Young Martin is doing splendidly.” 

“I know it is best,” said Muriel, “and the 
sooner you get up there with other men in your 

3 — Woman Who Trusted 


36 The Woman Who Trusted 

line of work the better it will be for you, and yet 
I can hardly bear to see you go.” 

“ I shall write to you often,” replied Wilmot, 
“and you must persuade your father to allow you 
to come on and study this fall.” 

“ I don’t think he wants me to go this year,” 
said the girl with a sigh. “ It seems that I am 
becoming more necessary to him and mamma 
every day.” 

An hour later Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild returned 
home. They entered at a side gate and passed 
into the house in the rear. Wilmot rose to go. 

“ I am going to walk with you to the gate,” 
said Muriel, sadly. 

“ Don’t you think your parents might disap- 
prove ?” asked Wilmot. 

“I don’t care what they think,” answered the 
girl desperately. “This is the last time, and I 
want my way. Mamma won’t care when she 
knows it was to say good-bye.” 

She put her hand on his arm and kept it there 
till they had reached the gate. The moon had 
risen above the near-by hills, causing the stars to 
fade from view. Wilmot opened the gate, her 
hand falling from his arm as he did so; he passed 
out and closed the gate between them. 

“Fate,” he said grimly, indicating the gate. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


37 


“ Oh, I wish you had not said that — exactly 
that!” Muriel cried. “I don’t want to think it 
will be like that. 

Her hand was resting on the top of the gate. 
The diamonds in her rings flashed coldly in the 
moonlight; her hand looked like marble. He 
took it, and pressed it tightly in one of his. Her 
face, her parted lips, her swimming eyes were 
close to his. 

“Good-bye,” he said. 

She made no reply, her voice hanging in her 
throat, and he moved away. Turning, when he 
had only taken a few steps, he saw her still stand- 
ing where he had left her. He went back, took 
her face between his hands and kissed her pas- 
sionately — recklessly. 

“I could not help it, Muriel,” he said. “I 
really could not. Good-bye.” 

She did not utter a word, but he heard her 
sob as she turned away. 


CHAPTER V. 


I F I HAD known you really intended to come 
I believe I should have advised you to think it 
over,” said Louis Chester to Wilmot on the 
arrival of the latter in New York two days later. 
“It’s a dog’s life, Burian, and not a lap-dog’s 
either — the brute belongs to the yaller pup 
species. You won’t find yourself unknown by a 
long shot. Did you read last month’s Current 
Fiction ?” 

“I have never seen it,” answered Wilmot. 

“ Good gracious, where do you live ? It’s a 
new eclectic magazine that is quite popular with 
literary folk. The number I speak of reprinted 
your story, ‘The Repentance of Milburn,’ from 
the Echo . In an editorial the editor declared it a 
gem, a — a — -he said lots of nice things about it. 
I have heard it mentioned in several places. 
Weyland read it to a crowd of us the other night 
in the studio, and it was enthusiastically applauded. 

“I have told that experience of yours with the 
editor of the Decade a dozen times. Harrison 
says it was simply tragic ; but you never wrote 
me what he replied when you returned his check.” 
33 


The Woman Who Trusted 


39 


“ He simply thanked me,” answered Wilmot, 
“and said he regretted that the mistake had 
occurred/’ 

“ Not a word of encouragement to submit 
something else?'’ asked Chester. “Then it was 
not the Decade that broke the back of your rus- 
ticity ?’’ 

“No. It was my novel,” smiled Wilmot. 
“ I have found a publisher for it.” 

“ Ah, I might have guessed it ! Few men are 
willing to remain in retirement during the calm 
that precedes the storm of a first appearance in 
covers. I have my first scrapbook. I pasted into 
it every newspaper mention of myself. If I went 
to a tea and was mentioned along with a job lot 
of light-weight celebrities I always blue penciled 
my name and preserved the entire account. I 
liked to see myself in droves of people who 
wanted to shine, and gathered like moths round 
someone who could gleam, even a little. I had 
an idea that my scrap books would some day be 
sold at auction ; I foolishly fancied I could see at 
the sale a thousand scrambling, bruised-nosed 
bidders. I had the proofs of my first novel 
bound in Russian leather and wrote in the first 
copies, ‘first from the press, second from the 
press, third,’ etc., and so on up to a hundred. 


40 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Only the man receiving the high honor of the first 
copy acknowledged receipt of it. He said he 
would read it when he had time. There has been 
a humiliating slump in my market. I got only one 
request last month for my autograph, and I began 
to hedge by saving the stamp. It was from a 
young lady in Maine. She said she had a hor- 
rible spinal affliction that kept her in bed twenty- 
four hours a day. She said my stories were 
the only comfort she got out of life. I was 
touched I assure you, and thinking it would do 
me good to look over former requests for my 
autograph, I got out the package in which I had 
tied them. You can imagine my chagrin when I 
found that ten out of the twenty requests I had 
received in the past were from girls with spinal 
affliction ; they all lived in the same town in 
Maine and had the same handwriting. Every 
time I had published a new story my ardent ad- 
mirer had spotted me as a beginner, and asked 
for my autograph. Her idea is, I believe, to paper 
a room — a town hall, I think — with the signatures 
of authors. I shall not send mine to her again. 
I dread the humiliation of the paperhanger’s dis- 
covering my multiplicity. 

“That very night there was a lot of fellows 
in this room, and James Fitch Ellerton began to 


The Woman Who Trusted 


4i 


talk of his work, and incidentally mentioned that 
he had just got something which had done him 
more good than all the editorial recognition he had 
ever received. It had drawn tears to his eyes, he 
said, and strengthened his determination to prove 
worthy of the confidence that people he had 
never met personally seemed to place in him. 

“‘Gentlemen/ he said, ‘I hold in my hand a 
letter from a poor girl who is confined to her bed 
with an awful spinal complaint/ 

“He paused to take the letter from the en- 
velope, and I broke in : 

“Til bet a box of cigars that she lives at W — , 
Maine, and that your stories are the only com- 
fort she gets out of life/ 

“ Ellerton stared for a minute, then he said : 

“ ‘Chester, you have read this letter/ 

“‘Not that but ten like it/ I said throwing 
my collection on the table, and the gang laughed 
at him. But seriously, tell me about the novel, 
Burian; who is to bring it out?” 

“Wellington and Clegg.” 

“Good people,” answered Chester — “that is, 
fairly good ; I think perhaps they are publishing 
too many books, but that is not your lookout. 
What terms?” 

“Ten per cent, royalty plan,” returned Wil- 


42 


The Woman Who Trusted 


mot. “They wanted me to give them the royalty 
on the first two thousand, but I refused.” 

“Good!” exclaimed Chester. “That’s true 
grit. I had even to accept the last refuge of 
helpless authors and spend quite a sum of money 
before my first publishers would market my wares. 
Wellington and Clegg must have liked your 
story.” 

“They said nothing of its merit till the papers 
were signed, then they praised it and wanted me 
to agree to write another for them.” 

“And—?” 

“I told them that I would wait till the book 
was out and think the matter over.” 

“I admire your pluck for a beginner,” declared 
Chester. “I was simply crazy to see myself in 
print. I would have bartered ten years of my 
life for a thousand copies of my callow enthusiasm 
well distributed. When will the book appear?” 

“ In about four weeks from now.” 

“ Rather early, but you must work it up in the 
meantime. I’ll introduce you to some of the 
critics and if they take a liking to you they will 
give you a boom ; being a new man is decidedly 
in your favor.” 

“I should be glad to meet any friends of 
yours,” said Wilmot, rising, “ but I want my 
work to be judged solely on its merits.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


43 


“Oh, of course I understand that,” said 
Chester quickly and he followed his friend across 
the corridor into another room. “I hope you 
will like this apartment. I told Mrs. McGowan, 
the landlady, that you were a friend of mine, and 
she will look after your comfort. There are some 
agreeable people in the building — Frank Harrison, 
first door next to mine, and Weyland has his 
studio at the top.” 

“ It will be an inspiration to know that you 
are at work under the same roof,” replied Wilmot. 

“ Oh, I haven’t done a literary thing in six 
months ; I am only making cord-wood now.” 

“ Cord- wood ! ” echoed Wilmot, “I am not 
sure that I understand the word.” 

“ It is matter that is bought by measurement,” 
smiled Chester. “We get so much a foot. We 
take a look at the editorial wood-shed and bid on 
filling it. It is not so much a matter of brains 
and genius as muscle. Most of us use type- 
writers. The big contractors dictate to short- 
hand scribblers who sublet the work to people who 
do copying at bread and water prices. That is 
one reason I was afraid you might not get on at 
first, for judging you by your carefully-written 
sketches you must be a most conscientious writer. 
Whether you will ever get over it I don’t know, 


44 


The Woman Who Trusted 


but this is not the age for conscientious work. 
I saw a list of six English writers yesterday all of 
whom say they write from four to eight thousand 
words a day.” 

“I don’t think that sort of thing can ever be 
right,” said Wilmot. “ I don’t want anything of 
mine to be published till I have done my best 
on it.” 

“I sized you up that way,” said Chester. “It 
seems to me that the place for you is the coun- 
try where board is cheap. You ought to take a 
week for polishing a paragraph, and grow a 
beard while writing another. If you stay here 
you will get gloriously over all that. New York 
will knock holes in your literary conscience. 
When I first came here I entertained your views, 
but now it is a neck and neck race for shekels. 
I am getting to be like Ellerton. He says he is 
in it for the cash.” 

Wilmot laughed good-naturedly. 

“ Notwithstanding this, I am going to stick to 
art for art’s sake,” he said. “ I shall do my work 
right if I starve at it.” 

“If it is starvation you are hungering for,” 
said Chester, “you can certainly get all you 
want, but you haven’t been tested. Wait till you 
are disgusted with your efforts that won’t bring 


The Woman Who Trusted 45 

enough cash to keep you in clean collars ; wait 
till an empty stomach drives out the tenants of 
your brain ; wait till you begin to smart under 
your inability to keep pace financially with men 
not half your equal ; wait, I say, Burian, till — 
till you are forty years of age and love a woman 
and would rather die a thousand times than give 
her up and yet know that she would expect you 
to hold your own with the rest — that her people 
would expect you to do it, and that her love 
would die if you failed. Ah, my boy, you don’t 
know what you are talking about! ” 

Chester’s tone had changed so remarkably 
that Wilmot stared at him in wonder. Both of 
them were silent for a moment, then Wilmot 
said : 

“ What is the matter with you, old man ?” 

‘‘Why do you ask that ?” inquired Chester. 

“ You don’t seem quite like your old self. 
You look nervous, and not so well as when we 
last met.” 

“Oh, I’m all right,” returned Chester. He 
sat down on Wilmot’s sofa and folded his hands 
over his knee. “ But I am really concerned about 
you and your future. By the way, tell me what 
has become of that Miss Fairchild?” 

“She is still at Dadeville. She was very well 
when I left.” 


46 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Chesters eyes met Wilmot’ s steadily. 

“She is a wonderfully fine girl,” he said. “I 
saw a good deal of her here last winter. She 
has a tip-top voice. She is a staunch friend of 
yours, and has unbounded faith in your future.” 

“ I am glad you like her so much,” said Wilmot 
simply ; “she is really the best friend I have.” 

“I say, Burian,” began Chester awkwardly, 
and he laid his hand on Wilmot’s knee familiarly ; 
“ pardon what I am going to say, but remember I 
am ten years older than you, and I feel a great 
interest in you. Don’t make the mistake I made 
when I was about your age.” 

“ What was that ?” asked Wilmot in surprise. 

“ I allowed the literary current I was in at that 
time” answered Chester “to sweep me away from 
the shores of matrimony into a sea of damnable dis- 
content. I ought to have married then. In follow- 
ing my will o’ the wisp I have actually become an 
unnatural man. Max Nordau is correct in saying 
that the majority of literary men are crazy. They 
remove themselves from nature and natural im- 
pulses. Note how many literary men there are 
who fail to get married. No man is better adapted 
to home life than an author, and yet no man can so 
easily miss securing that sort of happiness. Don’t 
follow in my footsteps, Burian. I’d rather never 


The Woman Who Trusted 


47 


have written a line than to suffer as I do from the 
lonely, eccentric life I am leading. If the dream 
of the other life would leave me it might not be 
so bad, but it’s in my sky always — always.” 

With that Chester suddenly stood up. “Well,” 
he said with a short laugh, “ I am going back to 
my desk to write a column of jests and jingles 
for the Sunday Advance .” 


CHAPTER VI. 


HE next morning Wilmot went into the 



* landlady’s sitting-room on the ground floor 
to leave an order for his mail, and as he was 
leaving he asked her if Chester had come down 
to breakfast. 

“I don’t think he came in at all last night,” 
she said, shrugging her fat shoulders over her 
ironing board, “ poor young man ! I guess they 
put ’im on some night work at the Advance; they 
often do and he gets in about twelve o’clock 
more dead than alive.” 

Just then there was a light rap on the half- 
open door, and a young lady about twenty years 
of age looked in. She was a perfect blonde, 
above medium height, slender, well-formed and 
stylishly dressed. Her features were regular, 
and her brow had the breadth of rare intelligence. 
She was decidedly pretty, her every movement 
a wave of grace. 

“ Oh, I beg pardon ! ” she exclaimed, on 
seeing Wilmot, who rose as she stepped to Mrs. 
McGowan’s table and laid on it a sealed envelope. 

“ Please give it to Mr. Chester,” she said — 

48 


The Woman Who Trusted 49 

just a bare suggestion of a flush in her cheeks ; 
“do you know if he has come down yet? ” 

“ I don’t think he came in last night, Miss 
Aline. This gentleman, his friend, was just 
asking about him.” 

The girl turned towards Wilmot ; the color 
in her face deepening as she spoke. 

“We are both friends of his,” she said. “I 
think you must be Mr. Wilmot Burian ; I have 
heard Mr. Chester speak of you often.” 

“ I have known him several years,” answered 
Wilmot, bowing. 

She held out her hand. 

“This is a genuine Bohemian introduction,” 
she laughed. “I am Miss Weyland. He has 
promised to bring you up to papa’s studio soon” 
— motioning upward with her gloved hand — 
“ Mr. Chester thinks a great deal of you.” 

“ The friendship is common to us both, I 
assure you,” was Wilmot’s reply. “ Chester has 
often written me about Mr. Weyland’s work and 
their intimacy, but I did not know that Mr. 
Weyland had a daughter.” 

A shadow fell across the girl’s face, and Wil- 
mot saw that he had made a false step. She evi- 
dently did not appreciate Chester’s not having 
mentioned her. 


50 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“You have not seen him this morning?” she 
asked, moving towards the entrance. 

“ I have not ; I rapped on his door as I passed, 
but got no response.” 

Her hand was on the door handle. “ Don’t 
let it be long before you come to see us,” were 
her parting words as she passed out into the cor- 
ridor. “Papa will be delighted to see you.” 

Mrs. McGowan went to the door and looked 
after the girl, then she returned to her ironing- 
table and put the note for Chester in front of the 
clock on the mantlepiece. 

“So you didn’t know Mr. Weyland had a 
daughter?” said she, with a knowing smile. 
“Well, it does look like he’d a-mentioned her to 
you. Him an Mr. Chester is like two brothers. 
Mr. Weyland is a widower — not much older than 
Mr. Chester either, an’ when she come home from 
boardin’ school six months ago her father took 
rooms for her next to his studio, an’ since then 
the three of ’em have lived like one family. Mr. 
Chester is as free in the studio as if he paid the 
rent, an’ often when Mr. Weyland is out of town, 
or busy on special orders, Mr. Chester takes 
charge and receives the folks that always come 
on reception day an’ sees to who is to play, or 
sing, or dance, or act, or what not. Him an’ 
Miss Aline certainly are great friends.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 51 

Wilmot did not wish to encourage the woman’s 
tendency to gossip, so he turned away, but a light 
had broken upon him. He was beginning to 
understand what had prompted Chesters feeling 
remarks about matrimony. 

Mrs. McGowan put down her smoothing iron 
and followed him to the door. 

“I reckon,” she said to herself as much as to 
Wilmot, “that he didn’t mention her because he 
thinks maybe she likes Mr. Harrison.” 

To this Wilmot made no response, and she 
reluctantly closed the door after him. 


4 — Woman W/io Trusted 


CHAPTER VII. 


D ESPITE her hopes for his ultimate success, 
Muriel was very unhappy after Wilmot’s 
departure. His visits had become essential to 
her enjoyment. 

The first day after he had gone was the longest 
she had ever known. She avoided the observing 
eye of her mother as much as possible. Most of 
that day was spent in her room because there, in 
a private drawer, reserved alone for things per- 
taining to him, were his letters, copies of his 
printed stories, notes she had jotted down in 
regard to plots after her talks with him. 

As she sat before this little drawer and looked 
back on the past, a lump rose in her throat. It 
gave her a touch of sadness to think that he 
would now be without what he had often said was 
so helpful to him — her suggestions and constant 
encouragement. She had several good cries, 
always drying her eyes most carefully afterward 
for fear her mother might burst in upon her sud- 
denly and detect these indications of her trouble. 

But Mrs. Fairchild was considerate of her 
daughter’s feelings. Indeed, if Muriel only 
5 2 


The Woman Who Trusted 


53 


might have looked in on her mother in the 
solitude of her sitting-room she would have seen 
that Mrs. Fairchild was suffering with her. The 
gentle woman took up first one piece of needle- 
work and then another, only to abandon each 
with weary sighs. She wandered out to her gar- 
den in the rear of the house, gave the gardener 
unnecessary advice, then went in to the kitchen 
and talked to the cook about the dinner, all the 
time thinking of her child’s grief. 

Later that sultry, cloudy afternoon, she was 
out at a summer-house training vines to climb up 
the lattice-work, when she saw Muriel, dressed 
for a walk, come down stairs into the hall. 

Mrs. Fairchild laid down her shears and step- 
ped from the chair on which she was standing. 
Then she went across the grass to her daughter, 
smiling sweetly. 

“Are you going for a walk, darling?” she 
asked. 

“Yes, mother,” the girl was drawing on her 
gloves as she descended the veranda steps. 

Mrs. Fairchild sighed. 

“Daughter, you are going to see Mrs. 
Burian.” 

Muriel did not look at the speaker as she 
answered. 


54 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“Yes, mother.” 

“Daughter, I don’t — I hardly think I would, 
so soon anyway. You know how apt people are 
to talk,” 

“I am going, mother dear,” replied Muriel 
firmly. “I think I ought to.” 

“ But you have never called on her, or Laura, 
and you know — ” 

“All the more reason why I should go now,” 
interrupted Muriel. “ Mother, if I had gone 
away yesterday, and you were alone at home you 
would be glad to have a friend of mine drop in. 
Isn’t that true ?” 

Mrs. Fairchild acknowledged her complete 
defeat in her next remark. 

“ Well, don’t stay late, dear. You must not 
think me unsympathetic. Your trouble is mine. 
Go do as you like ; but, darling, it is awful hard to 
know that I haven’t all your heart. Now, I pre- 
sume you will love his mother. I wouldn’t blame 
you, she is a dear soul, but—” 

“Silly mamma,” Muriel laughed. She kissed 
her mother and turned away. 

As she approached the home of the Burians, 
Muriel saw Mrs. Burian rocking back and forth 
on the front veranda. She was glad of this, for 
in bowing to the old lady from the gate she took 


The Woman Who Trusted 


55 


from her visit the appearance of formality. She 
tried to make it seem as if she were out walking 
for pleasure, and stopped only because she no- 
ticed Mrs. Burian on the veranda. 

“I thought I might be able to cheer you up a 
little, Mrs. Burian,” she said, as the old lady rose 
and held out her hand. 14 Of course, I know of 
Wilmot’s leaving, and I can imagine this first day 
must be a melancholy one.” 

“The bluest I ever spent I do believe,” smiled 
Mrs. Burian. “And I am so glad you came. It 
is very good of you.” She went into the hall 
and brought another chair. “Sit down. Won’t 
you take off your hat ?” 

Muriel had not time to stop long. 

“He and I have been such companions, and 
such good friends, that I miss him, too, very 
much,” she remarked. 

The old lady rocked back and forth, her thin 
hands crossed in her lap. 

44 If I only knew that it would come out all 
right,” she said plaintively, 44 it would be alto- 
gether different. But I can’t imagine how he is 
going to get along away up there in a strange 
city without any business or sufficient money. It 
seems such a great risk for an inexperienced 
young man to take. 


56 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Muriel felt glad she had come, as she an- 
swered reassuringly : 

“ You must not feel that way, Mrs. Burian. 
Pie is going to do wonderful things in New 
York.” 

Mrs. Burian brought her chair to a stand. 
Her thin hand quivered as she raised it to her 
mouth. 

“ Do you believe that, Muriel ?” she ques- 
tioned. “ Do you in fact?” 

“ As confidently as I believe anything,” said 
the girl. “ He has wonderful talent — -it really 
amounts to genius. It will be impossible for the 
public to fail to appreciate his work when it is put 
before them in his novel.” 

“ Oh, I’m so glad to hear you talk that way,” 
cried Mrs. Burian. “ He is such a good boy, and 
does love his writing so much. I am absolutely 
ignorant of such matters, and I have heard so 
many folks talk against a young man doing story- 
writing. You know most everybody here thinks 
he is throwing away his time. Miss Sarah Ben- 
son called this morning to talk over the literary 
club-meeting with Laura. Laura has just joined. 
I asked Miss Sarah if she had read any of Wil- 
mot’s stories, and I thought she was almost 
impolite. She said her time was taken up so 


The Woman Who Trusted 


57 


much with managing the classical books the club 
had picked out that she hadn’t a minute to give 
to little short stories in trashy papers. She said she 
didn’t believe in wasting time on the writing of 
people who were unknown.” 

“ But the world at large, fortunately, is not like 
Miss Sarah,” said Muriel, consolingly. “She 
sneers at everything that does not bear a big 
name, and thinks she knows everything about 
literature that is worth knowing. But,” Muriel’s 
indignation was waxing higher, “ the world at 
large reads the stories by new writers, and if they 
are good, they have the courage of their convic- 
tions and declare them so. They are the people 
to whom posterity really owes its literature. 
Miss Sarah’s club rarely opens its door to real 
home talent. If the home talent will only read 
its productions before the august body of the club 
the members will laud it to the skies, but the 
home talent that secures an audience actually one 
million times larger is promptly sat upon. If Miss 
Sarah’s club could possibly teach me anything 
about books I would join it, but when any well- 
educated girl has to listen to little Maudie Sim- 
mons simper over a paper on such topics as ‘ The 
Limitations of the Historical Novel ’ it is not en- 
thralling, to say the least.” 


58 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Mrs. Burian laughed heartily. 

“ I declare I think you are right, Muriel. 
Laura says the girls don’t compose what they 
read, anyway. They say our minister’s sermons 
are being neglected because he writes nearly all 
the compositions for the girls in town. I know 
that Laura never can talk about one of her sub- 
jects a week after she has studied it.” 

“ I don’t mean to be severe,” went on Muriel, 
elated over having amused the old lady, “and I 
would not criticise their methods if they would only 
see the merit in Wilmot’s stories.” 

A shadow fell across Mrs. Burian’s sweet old 
features. 

“They predict that he will go to ruin now 
that he has given up the law,” she sighed. 
“ Several of the neighbors have been in to talk 
about it. They all seem to think I am actually to 
be pitied.” 

Muriel’s eyes flashed. 

“They shall see,” she said. “ It won’t belong 
either before his book is out, and then they will 
hear from him.” 

“I do hope it will be so,” said Mrs. Burian. 
“When people thought he was doing nothing be- 
cause he had no cases in court, he was sitting in 
his room up stairs every night reading and writ- 


The Woman Who Trusted 59 

in g till almost morning. I could tell when he 
went to bed for the light of his lamp always shone 
on that oak tree out there. Sometimes I’d wake 
up at one or two o’clock and the light would be 
as bright as ever.” 

Muriel glanced at the staircase in the hall. 

“I never knew which was his room,” she said, 
tentatively. “I have often wondered in passing.” 

“It is up under the roof,” remarked the old 
woman. “It is such a queer place. He left it 
just as it was. I’m a good mind to show it to 
you — that is, if you’d care to see it.” 

“I should like it very much,” the girl returned 
after a moment’s hesitation in which her mother’s 
warning face flashed before her mental vision. 

“Come on then,” Mrs. Burian laughed. “I 
don’t know what he would say. I am sure he 
would not object to your seeing it.” 

They ascended the old-fashioned narrow stairs 
and went into the little room under the sloping 
roof. It was indeed a queer-looking place. The 
rafters were once bare, but Wilmot had covered 
them and the walls with dark blue cloth. The 
cloth bulged out between the brass-headed tacks 
and made it look like a padded cell curiously 
decorated. On the wall of one entire side, the 
cloth was hidden by a collection of posters of 


6o 


The Woman Who Trusted 


magazines and books. Some of these were 
framed in natural wood, others were under glass 
narrowly edged with paper. A German student 
lamp stood in the centre of a little square table 
on which lay some sheets of ink-saturated blotting 
paper. A pen lay beside an uncorked ink bottle. 

“Is this the pen he used?” asked Muriel. 

“Yes,” was Mrs. Burian’s reply. “I suppose 
he thought it was not worth taking. It is such a 
cheap one, and is about worn out.” 

The eyes of the two women met. There was 
something in Muriel’s that Mrs. Burian could 
not quite understand. Perhaps it was because 
her own love affair lay so deeply enveloped 
in the shadows and worries of the past. Finally 
a thought came to her; she received it telephatic- 
ally through the mediumship of Muriel’s eyes. 

“Perhaps you would like to have the pen, since 
—since you are such a good friend of his and count 
so much on his success,” stammered the old 
woman. 

“I was almost tempted to ask for it,” con- 
fessed the girl, and she flushed as she had never 
flushed before her own mother. 

“Oh, you are welcome to it,” said Mrs. Bur- 
ian. “We have no need of it. Mr. Burian 
brings them home by the dozen.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 61 

“Thank you so much.” Muriel put the pen 
into her pocket and looked about the room. Mrs. 
Burian moved to the fireplace over which were 
fastened pictures of great authors, actors and 
musicians. The mantlepiece was filled with 
photographs of Wilmot’s friends, but there was a 
noticeable vacancy in the centre as if something 
had Been taken away. Mrs. Burian’s eyes rested 
on the spot. 

“I said nothing had been changed,” she said, 
“but I see he has taken your picture. It always 
stood right here, back of this little china plate. 
He always kept water in the plate, and when he 
came in through the garden he often gathered 
flowers and placed them there.” 

Muriel felt a tightness in her throat ; her eyes 
grew moist, there was a mist before her sight. 
She took a chair and Mrs. Burian sat down on 
Wilmot’s bed, now spotlessly white under its fresh 
coverlet. 

“ He was always good even as a child,” sighed 
the old lady. “He was unlike his brother that 
died. Wilmot was so tender with me. He really was 
the only one that kept up the habit of kissing me 
every morning when he went out and every even- 
ing when he came in. That naturally made him 
my favorite. Until he began to displease his 


6 2 


The Woman Who Trusted 


father by writing so much I never had one un- 
happy moment about him — not one.” 

“ Mr. Burian will some day understand him 
and be the — the proudest father in Dadeville.” 
Muriel found the courage to say, leaning her head 
on her hand and resting her elbow on the table. 

“You have made me feel almost happy,” said 
Mrs. Burian. “ I am so glad you came to see 
me. It was so thoughtful. I was so lonely. No 
one else has thought of anything more cheerful to 
say than to predict his failure. I hope you will 
come in whenever you can. It seems strange to 
me that I should like you so much all at once. 
But I suppose it is because we both miss Wilmot.” 

“ That must be it,” answered Muriel, who was 
struggling against the impulse to kiss the old face. 
She rose and moved towards the door. The sky 
outside had darkened and the small, single win- 
dow let in a little of the lingering daylight. She 
wanted to get away before Laura Burian came 
home. 

That night in her room as Muriel prepared for 
sleep, she took out the old pen, held it reverently 
in her palms and kissed it. She then laid it away 
in the drawer containing Wilmot’s letters and fell 
on her knees and prayed for him. 


CHAPTER VIII. 



HAT very afternoon Chester came into Wil- 


A mot’s room while the latter was working on 
a short story which he had begun in the South. 

“ Sorry I didn’t see you this morning,” he 
began. “ I had some work in Newspaper Row, 
and could not get back in time to ask you to 
lunch with me at the Author’s Club. We will go 
some other day. But I have made an engage- 
ment for us this afternoon to attend a reception 
at the Galatin, given by Dorothea Helpin Langdon. 
You know who she is ; she edits the Young 
People s Pastime , and is ‘Kitty Caruthers’ on the 
Advance 

Wilmot hesitated, glancing down at his man- 
uscript from which he had risen. 

“Don’t you think it rather early for me to — ” 

“ Not a bit of it ; the sooner the better,” inter- 
rupted Chester. “Your book will soon be out, 
and the newspaper people you will meet there 
will help to set your literary ball rolling. Besides 
Dorothea may ask you to contribute something 
to the Pastime .” 

“ But—” Wilmot looked down at his clothes. 

“Oh, rubbish! You’ll be the best dressed 


64 


The Woman Who Trusted 


man there ; your frock coat fits you as if you had 
been melted into it. You are going to be called 
the handsomest man in New York this season.” 

Wilmot frowned. 

“I am at your disposal,” he said. 

“You’ll meet a lot of log-rollers,” laughed 
Chester, sitting down. “ Dorothea made me tell 
her all I knew about you and your work. I assure 
you I boomed you to the limit of my imagination. 
She will, in her turn, impress your greatness on 
her guests, and you must not deny anything. 
Denying one’s magnitude is inartistic and is some- 
thing deity has never been guilty of. Poise 
yourself so that the really intelligent will think 
you take the booming as a joke, and the others 
as undefiled truth that falls short of the mark. 
The better element will be hidden behind curtains 
and sip their tea in retired corners, so, in the main 
you’d better play the dignity act.” 

Wilmot noticed the dark rings round Chester’s 
eyes, the sallow paleness of his face, the nervous 
movements of his hands, and recalled Mrs. Mc- 
Gowan’s gossip. 

“Chester,” he said suddenly, “you did not 
tell me Weyland had a daughter.” 

Chester started ; he raised a studious glance 
to Wilmot’s face. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


65 


“ Didn’t I ?” he asked slowly ; “ surely you 
have forgotten, but how did you know he — that 
there was a young lady?” 

“We happened to meet in the landlady’s 
room this morning. She ran in to see about 
something — I think it was to leave a note for 
you.” 

“Forme?” exclaimed Chester, in a startled 
voice, “are you sure?” 

“Quite sure ; she left it with Mrs. McGowan.” 

Chester tried to appear indifferent as he rose. 
“I — I’ll run down and see about it,” he said. 
“ Mrs. McGowan was not in when I came up. 
Perhaps it is something Miss Weyland wants me 
to attend to. Be ready at four, old man, I don’t 
want to disappoint Mrs. Langdon.” 


The Galatin was a large modern hotel in West 
Twenty-fifth street near Fifth Avenue. Mrs. 
Langdon’s apartment was on the seventh floor, 
to which visitors were projected by a swift eleva- 
tor in charge of a colored boy in blue uniform. 

“Looks like an awful crush,” remarked Ches- 
ter as the elevator stopped and a buzz of many 
voices reached their ears from the end of a cor- 
ridor branching off towards the right. Chester 


66 


The Woman Who Trusted 


piloted Wilmot along a narrow passage to a 
dressing-room behind the salon. Here hats, 
canes, umbrellas and wraps were piled like jack- 
straws on the bed. 

“ Dorothea’s boudoir,” explained Chester, 
when the white-aproned maid had departed with 
their cards. He picked up a silver-backed hair- 
brush and struck at his thick hair. “ I say, 
Burian” — leaning close to the mirror of the 
dressing-table, “ am I not looking awfully thin 
and yellow ?” 

“A little, perhaps,” admitted Wilmot, “but — ” 

“ It’s my liver, old man,” ran on Chester, who 
had not noticed the hesitation in Wilmot’s reply. 
“ It’s all out of order. I know I am not in good 
form. The truth is, I am overworked.” 

Wilmot could formulate no suitable reply ; he 
was saved from the necessity of it by the reap- 
pearance of the maid to conduct them to the 
drawing-room. 

As they entered the large salon, from which 
every suggestion of daylight had been carefully 
excluded to heighten the effect of the electric 
lights beneath daintily tinted globes and gauzy 
silken shades. Wilmot was struck with the beauty 
of the scene, and felt his pulses quicken with a 
sensation he had never experienced. As they 


The Woman Who Trusted 


67 


entered Mrs. Langdon approached from a group 
of ladies and gentlemen in the centre of the room. 

“ Oh, Mr. Chester !” she exclaimed, “ I was 
just wondering if you had proved false. Writers 
never keep appointments except with the cashier 
on pay day. No, no; no conventionality, please,” 
she laughed, raising a jeweled hand to oppose 
Chester’s introduction of Wilmot. “I already 
know Mr. Burian by reputation. I have read your 
sketch that everybody is talking about, ‘The Re- 
pentance of — ’ what’s his name ? and know you 
will be heard from again. We are going to look 
to you for the great American novel, ri est ce pas , 
Monsieur Chester?” 

Wilmot bowed over her hand. He was vaguely 
disappointed. He had never read a line that she 
had written, but he had heard of her as being the 
editor of a child’s magazine and as a writer of 
helpful articles about women and their progress, 
and had expected her to have less the manner 
and appearance of a thorough society woman. 

Her cheeks were thin, her face was slightly 
rouged and powdered. 

Wilmot did not remember what he said, but 
whatever it was, did not come from his heart. 
Already he had caught the plague of insincerity. 
Fortunately relief came; the maid was showing in 

5 — Woman Who Trusted 


68 


The Woman Who Trusted 


new visitors. As Mrs. Langdon began to smile 
and bow to them he caught sight of his reflection 
in a pier-glass across the room, and felt ashamed 
to see it there. He hoped Chester would not in- 
troduce him to any of the people to whom 
he was bowing and ejaculating words of greet- 
ing. He felt a vague yearning for a seat in one 
of the book-lined alcoves, or that failing, to be 
allowed to stand undisturbed like the statues in 
the corners. It seemed silly of Chester to be 
shaking hands on a level with people’s eyes. 

“There is Mrs. Sennett !” Chester exclaimed. 
“She was with Mrs. Langdon this morning, and 
said she wanted to meet you. She has you on 
the prongs of her gaze now. We must go over 
to her. She is a rich widow; her specialty is 
young men of talent; they say she educated Tar- 
pley, the Chicago painter. Come on.” 

Mrs. Sennett appeared to be about fifty years 
of age. Some of her friends declared she 
was five years older. She did not use rouge, but 
it was said that she began so early in life to pat- 
ronize a certain practitioner in the art of smooth- 
ing away wrinkles that her face was much younger- 
looking than her Maker had intended it to remain. 
A disciple of Delsarte, her movements had the 
grace of mature youth as she drew her skirts aside 
for Wilmot to sit beside her. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


69 


“ I’ve been anxious to meet you,” she said, 
beaming on him. “I have heard of you and your 
work ; I never could account for my extraordin- 
ary interest in authors.” 

“I have really not made a beginning,” said 
Wilmot, reddening with vexation as he thought 
of the false position Chester had put him in. 

“O, how absurd !” exclaimed the widow, touch- 
ing his arm playfully with her tinseled fan, “and 
yet the critics are ready to review your writings ; 
your book will soon be on everybody’s table, and 
— oh lots of other things ! Tell me really how it 
feels.” 

Her eyes wandered from his face to the door- 
way through which a tall beardless man with long 
black hair was entering. 

“That’s Charles Kersey,” she said without wait- 
ing for him to reply; “he belongs to the Wrenshall 
Stock Company, and does the leading roles in all 
their new plays. He is a great celebrity. Watch 
Dorothea smirk and bend before him. She has 
never before been able to entice him here. I ven- 
ture she will give him a column in the Advance to- 
morrow. She stopped mentioning the Wrenshall 
plays all at once and filled up her theatrical space 
with other matter ; that showed Kersey her value ; 
then she sent him her card for this ‘at home’ and 


7o 


The Woman Who Trusted 


he came. Dorothea is very sly — almost too sly to 
be a good friend.” 

Mrs. Sennett paused for a moment, and 
eyed Wilmot critically from head to foot, then she 
said : 

“You are going to make it without doubt. I 
predict it !” 

“Make what?” asked he, wonderingly. 

“A social success this season,” was her re- 
sponse. “I have never seen anyone with more 
of the necessary qualifications. Right now, I am 
the envy of all those young ladies over there in 
that group because I happen to know you. Not 
even Kersey himself is attracting so much atten- 
tion; you see it is known that he is engaged. 
Ah, there is Weyland and his pretty daughter. 
I wonder why he has brought her here. I have 
heard that he would not let her know Dorothea. 
I’d risk anything that Dorothea has thrown out a 
hint that she is going to have her portrait painted 
to be exhibited in Paris or London. Even men 
as clever as Weyland lay aside prejudice to ob- 
obtain patronage and advertisement. Do you 
think Miss Weyland pretty, Mr. Burian?” 

“Quite,” answered Wilmot, “and she looks 
good and sincere.” 

“Decidedly out of place in this crowd, it 


The Woman Who Trusted 71 

seems to me,” remarked Mrs. Sennett with a 
touch of honesty in her tone that Wilmot liked 
more than her previous gossip. “ I have heard 
that your friend Mr. Chester admires her very 
much.” 

“They are warm friends I believe,” Wilmot 
returned; “he and Weyland are very intimate.” 

“You are a mystery to me! You don’t seem 
a bit vain,” laughed Mrs. Sennett; “the young 
ladies in the room are anxious to get at you, and 
yet you have flattered me with fully ten minutes of 
your undivided attention. There is a bold thing 
elbowing her way towards us now ; it would be 
just like her to dare to — ” 

A young woman in a simple tailor-made gown 
had stopped beside the widow, and bent to her 
right ear. 

“ Present me, please, Mrs. Sennett,” she 
whispered loud enough for Wilmot to overhear ; 
“I must get back to the office by seven, and I have 
another tea to take in.” 

“ I don’t see how I can, Miss Hatch,” coldly 
replied Mrs. Sennett, “you see — why, ask Doro- 
thea — she — ” 

“ Her hands are too full,” hastily broke in 
the young woman. “ Besides, she’d be afraid 
I’d get a news item. Well, I presume I shall have 


72 The Woman Who Trusted 

to do it myself.” The speaker crossed over to 
Wilmot. 

“I beg pardon,” she said to him, “this is Mr. 
Burian, I think?” 

“It is,” said Wilmot, rising and bowing. 

“I am Miss Hatch of the Afternoon Progress , 
the reporter continued glibly. “ I hope you won’t 
think me bold, but I am a newspaper woman and 
have to beard you lions in your dens sometimes. 
I was sent up here by my paper to get items. So, 
please, talk fast, there is another skirted scribe 
over there trying to devise some less heroic 
method than mine to get at you. I overheard 
Mrs. Langdon just now speaking about your new 
book and your work in the South, and I thought 
you might not object to talk a little for publica- 
tion.” 

“There is really nothing to be said,” replied 
Wilmot who had never been interviewed by a 
reporter. “I am only a beginner, and — ” 

“ But you have had a novel accepted that is 
soon to appear?” 

“Yes, but — ” 

“How very lucky you are! Are your pub- 
lishers in New York?” 

She had taken a tiny notebook and a pencil 
from her pocket. 


The Woman Who Trusted 73 

“ I don’t think I would care to say anything 
for publica — ” 

“Is the title a secret?” asked the young woman, 
stabbing her lips with the tip of the pencil, and 
clutching her note-book with a fresh grasp as 
she began to write. “And would you mind giv- 
ing me a hint as to the general character or pur- 
pose of the book ; but first of all who are your 
publishers ?” 

“Wellington and Clegg,” answered Wilmot, 
“but frankly, Miss Hatch, I do not desire to have 
my book mentioned at present. My publishers 
will in due time, I believe, send out an announce- 
ment to the press, and I should not like to be 
quoted as saying anything beforehand.” 

“Wellington and Clegg!” exclaimed the re- 
porter, looking up in astonishment. “ How very 
unfortunate ! Why, have you not heard the news?” 

' “ I don’t understand,” replied Wilmot. 

“I see you don’t know,” went on the young 
woman. “Of course you don’t! I should not 
have known it myself if my editor hadn’t 
telephoned me only half an hour ago to run in 
there and get all the information possible. Why, 
they have gone all to pieces — Wellington and 
Clegg have. The sheriff took charge of their 
place early this afternoon. It is said their 


74 


The Woman Who Trusted 


liabilities will reach half a million. I am awfully 
sorry for you, Mr. Burian. Edgar Prenness, a 
friend of mine was there, and the poor fellow 
was almost crying with disappointment. His 
novel was not sold to them outright, but he said 
all accepted manuscripts would be held till a 
settlement is made, and that might take consider- 
able time.” 

Wilmot felt his blood turn cold. He had 
a dim impression that Miss Hatch was studying 
his features with the cold eye of a vivisectionist, 
and that Mrs. Sennett was giving his coat-tail a 
gentle, surreptitious tug. He saw Chester bend- 
ing over Miss Weyland at the piano, a tender ex- 
pression in his eyes, and Mrs. Langdon in close 
conversation with the girl’s father before a late 
portrait of Dorothea on the wall. Wilmot tried 
to say something to the young woman at his side, 
but his words fluttered unborn in his throat. 

“It must be a great blow to you,” said Miss 
Hatch, drawing a cross mark over the words she 
had just written. “It was Mr. Prenness’ first 
book. It had been refused by fifteen publishers. 
He says even if he had it back, it would only 
remain on his hands.” 

“ Don’t let a little thing like that bother you.” 
It was Mrs. Sennett’s consoling voice, and the 


The Woman Who Trusted 75 

widow stood up and glared at Miss Hatch. “ Sit 
down and try to think of something else.” 

“You are very kind,” replied Wilmot, bowing 
to the reporter, who was moving away. 

“ I could not keep from overhearing what that 
meddlesome woman said,” went on the widow, 
“and I can not tell you how sorry I am. We 
must look about and see what can be done. 
Run up to my rooms — third floor in this house — 
any afternoon and take tea with me. I am always 
in at four.” Something in the woman’s tone 
vaguely soothed him, butjie hardly heard what she 
was saying. He was thinking of Muriel Fairchild 
and her gentle sympathy when she should hear 
of his misfortune. She had counted so confidently 
on the success of this particular book. 

He saw Chester and Miss Weyland coming 
tov/ards him. “I’m awfully sorry, old man,” 
said the former. “ Miss Hatch has just told me 
about the failure. But never mind; we’ll see what 
can be done. I’ll help you look into it.” 

“Such a pity,” observed Miss Weyland to 
Mrs. Sennett. “ He has only been in the city 
two days, and this is the sort of welcome he has 
received. Oh, these publishers make me furious ! 
They are never reliable ! ” 

“ I think we’d better go, Burian,” proposed 


76 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Chester. “I fancy you don’t care to talk the 
matter over with strangers, and they will surround 
you in a minute.” “ I am ready,” replied Wilmot. 
“You are all very kind.” 

“ I feel almost like crying,” declared Mrs. 
Sennett, clasping his hand as he rose. “I would 
give anything to lessen your disappointment. I 
can see that you are greatly troubled.” 

“Oh, it may come out all right,” replied 
Wilmot, with an effort to appear indifferent. 

“Don’t forget my invitation,” was the widow’s 
parting reminder. “ Remember I am in every 
afternoon at four.” 

“ Thanks ; I shall not forget,” replied Wilmot. 

“Take him right up to the studio,” he heard 
Miss Weyland say to Chester. “We’ll join you 
before long. I’d go back with you now, but Papa 
wants me to meet Lady Stuart. Mrs. Langdon 
tells him she wants a portrait and he thought if I 
met her, Lady Stuart would feel more at home 
in the studio; you understand, I know.” 

“I thought we’d have a talk with Frank 
Harrison if he is in his rooms” answered Chester. 
“He can advise us better than anyone else.” 

“You can all go up to the studio,” urged the 
girl. “I want to know how it comes out.” 

“All right,” said Chester; “we’ll wait for you 
there. “Good bye.” 


CHAPTER IX. 



OU certainly are having bad luck,” said 


* Chester, as he and Wilmot were walking up 
Broadway. “I don’t think such a thing would 
make me lose much sleep, but I know how impor- 
tant it is to a beginner. 

‘T feel like a tramp,” replied Wilmot, bitterly. 
“I gave up my profession at home, and on the 
hope of my book attracting attention, came up 
here to begin a new life. I know it is an accident 
when a book is accepted. I might try half a life- 
time and never get mine taken again. The fact 
that Wellington and Clegg liked it would have no 
weight with any other house, for if they had been 
better judges of literature they would not have 


failed.” 


“We’ll talk to Harrison,” returned Chester. 
“He has published half a dozen books, and will 
know what is best.” 

They found the poet and essayist in his little 
sitting-room at the head of the stairs. He had 
just brewed and drunk a cup of his favorite tea, 
and was sitting in the bay-window lazily smoking 
a cigarette. 

“Come in,” he cried out hospitably as he rec- 


77 


78 


The Woman Who Trusted 


ognized Chester in the corridor. “ Glad to make 
your acquaintance,” he added to Wilmot. “I 
know who you are, and a friend of Chester’s is 
ever welcome. Have you had tea, gentlemen?” 

“At Dorothea’s,” declined Chester. 

“I thought you were not going there any 
more!” said Harrison, with half a sneer. “But I 
knew you would when I heard Weyland say he 
and Miss Aline were going. It is a shame, Ches- 
ter. She doesn’t care for that kind of crowd, and 
Weyland ought not to drag her with him.” 

“Both Dorothea and Lady Stuart want their 
portraits painted and Dorothea wrote too plainly 
to be misunderstood that she wanted him to bring 
his daughter,” explained Chester with a frown. 

Harrison threw his cigarette away, and began 
to roll another. 

“It’s a shame!” he repeated hotly. “A 
thousand years of that sort of thing would not 
affect her, but it is no place for her all the same. 
But there was no harm in you going, Chester, and 
I am glad you took your friend.” 

“Mr. Burian and I want to have a business 
talk with you,” said Chester, abruptly. “We 
promised Miss Weyland that we’d wait in the 
studio, and that we’d ask you to go up.” 

Harrison bent the paper at the end of his 
cigarette and thrust it between his fine teeth. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


79 


“I'll take off my smoking-jacket and follow,” 
he said with undisguised eagerness. “When do 
you expect them back?” 

“In a few minutes.” 

Wilmot had never before been in a well-ar- 
ranged studio, and had he felt less depressed, he 
would more fully have enjoyed the beautiful long 
room with its curving roof of frosted glass, its mas- 
sive Japanese screens of carved wood, rare tapes- 
tries, paintings, statues, luxurious lounges, puffy 
pillows, Oriental rugs, and general profusion of 
curios gathered from various parts of the world. 
The windows were wide plate glass, as clear as 
crystal, and the view stretched out over the house- 
tops to the Hudson. 

Scarcely a word was spoken between the two 
friends. Wilmot fancied Chester’s face had worn 
a little cloud since the allusion to Miss Weyland 
by Harrison a few minutes before. Chester 
picked up a tray of cigars, and mechanically 
offering them to Wilmot, took one himself. 

“Thanks,” said Wilmot, taking a cigar and 
then returning it to the tray. “ I won’t smoke 
here.” 

“She doesn’t mind,” said Chester, quickly; 
“ she often begs us to do it.” 

“ I don’t feel in the mood for it, thank you.” 


So 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Shortly afterwards Frank Harrison came in, 
panting from his climb up the stairs. He was in 
evening dress, and appeared very stylish and 
handsome. Wilmot had heard that he was some- 
thing of an aristocrat. 

“ Have a dinner engagement,” he explained, 
as he went to a sideboard, cracked some ice, and 
drank a glass of creme de menthe , then he threw 
himself on a lounge and began to feel in his pocket 
for his cigarette-paper. 

“Well,” he said, “ let’s get the business over 
before the young lady comes.” 

“ She is interested in it also,” explained Ches- 
ter coldly. “ It is about Burian’s novel of which 
I told you.” 

‘‘Yes, yes, I remember,” Harrison’s glance 
went to Wilmot’s face, inquiringly, “ and I am 
curious to see it out.” 

“ It was accepted by Wellington and Clegg,” 
added Chester. 

“ Thunder ! you don’t say so ! ” Harrison 
sat up erect. 

“We have just heard of the failure,” went 
on Chester. “ It is an unusually great dis- 
appointment, for, as you know, this is Burian’s 
first book. It was to be a sort of starter ; it 
would have kind of piloted him into the open 
sea, you know.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 81 

“ Very unfortunate ! ” ejaculated Harrison, in 
a tone of genuine sympathy. 

“ I thought you might give us a helpful sug- 
gestion,” went on Chester ; “you know the pub- 
lishing field as well as anyone.” 

“ I have just been reading about the failure 
in the Progress ,” rejoined Harrison. “ The house 
was besieged this afternoon by authors clamoring 
for their manuscripts, and it appears that they 
can’t even recover them. But if Mr. Burian will 
pardon what I say ; it seems to me that, in the case 
of a first book, a new writer would be about as well 
off with his manuscript in the possession of a bank- 
rupt firm as to have it on hand to hawk about till 
it is worn to shreds. You know, Chester, how 
hard it is to get a hearing, and how apt publishers 
are to think that new men can’t possibly supply 
their needs. There is some talk about the credi- 
tors allowing Wellington and Clegg to resume 
business, and in that case Mr. Burian’s book 
would stand a chance of being published by them, 
so I hardly know what to advise. If he takes it 
from them he might not easily find another pub- 
lisher, and if he leaves it with them, it may event- 
ually be brought out. He must take his choice 
between two evils.” 

“You are very kind,” replied Wilmot. “I 
shall go down to-morrow and try to see the firm.” 


82 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“And do not give up till you have exhausted 
every resource,” put in Chester. “In the end it 
may turn out that the failure was the best thing 
that could have happened.” He bent forward to 
look through the open door into the corridor. 

Miss Weyland and her father were coming. 

After Wilmot was introduced to the artist, who 
received him very cordially, Harrison and 
Weyland began to talk of the latter’s work, and 
went into an adjoining room to look at a portrait 
the artist was finishing. Seeing Chester and 
Miss Weyland in close conversation at the piano, 
Wilmot turned into a bay-window without being 
noticed by them. 

Harrison’s cold, professional remarks on the 
situation had not lessened his depression. The sun 
was just going down beyond a stretch of brown 
roofs ; night was coming on. He felt very lonely. 
The actions of Chester and Miss Weyland con- 
vinced him that they were lovers, and this dis- 
covery brought Muriel Fairchild to his mind. He 
felt his blood rise hotly to his face as he remem- 
bered confessing to her that he was going to 
New York with scarcely a hundred dollars in his 
possession. She had delicately hinted that she 
would willingly advance a small sum of money to 
him, and he had only escaped being urged to take 


The Woman Who Trusted 83 

it by assuring her that as soon as his book was 
published he would be able to dispose of sufficient 
literary work to sustain him. She would now 
read of the failure in the papers and fully compre- 
hend his financial condition. This thought stung 
him to the quick. 

“ You have a fine view from this window, 
Miss Weyland,” he said, turning to the couple. 
“ This must be an ideal residence, up here above 
the clouds.” 

“ How prettily you put it,” she smiled. “ You 
are, however, seeing it at its best; often the clouds 
are of smoke and they rise to our level only to 
stay with us. Mr. Chester tells me we are to have 
you to dinner with us at our favorite cafe down 
stairs. We are going to try to make you forget 
that ugly disappointment.” 

“ Thank you. But you must really excuse me 
this time/’ answered Wilmot. “I don’t feel 
very well, and I have several important matters 
to attend to at once.” 

But when he reached his room half an hour 
later, he found that he had nothing to attend to 
except to write to Muriel Fairchild. This he ac- 
complished in as hopeful a strain as possible. After 
the letter was ended, he lowered his head to his 
folded arms to think. After awhile his troubled 


6 — Woman Who Trusted 


84 The Woman Who Trusted 

thoughts became confused, and sleep took pos- 
session of his senses. 

He was awakened about ten o’clock by the 
voices of Chester and Miss Weyland as they 
were returning from the cafe. A few minutes 
later Chester came slowly back from the studio 
and entered his room. Wilmot looked from one 
of his windows. There was a yellow glare over 
Union Square, and further on gleamed the star- 
like lights on the tower of Madison Square 
Garden. 


CHAPTER X. 


r T'HE next morning as Wilmot was going out, 
* he met Frank Harrison on the stairs. 

“ I presume you still intend to see Wellington 
and Clegg,” was his cordial greeting. 

“If I can gain admittance,” replied Wilmot. 

“You may fail in that,” said the poet; “but 
in any case I want you to drop into the editorial 
rooms of my publishers, King and Burton. I 
have written this note of introduction for you to 
my friend Lester. Even if they can’t help you in 
this matter it will do you no harm to know them. 
They bring out all my books, and there are no 
better people in the United States.” 

“I appreciate your kindness,” said Wilmot, 
taking the note, “ I shall not fail to call on them.” 

Half an hour later he was at the entrance of 
the building occupied by Wellington and Clegg. 
The door was closed, and a man in the dress of a 
laborer was rapping for admittance. 

“They have cut the bell-wire,” he observed 
to Wilmot with a smile, and he gave the door 
several sharp blows with his fist. 

“ I want to see the firm,” said Wilmot. “Can 
you tell me how to get at them?” 


85 


86 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ I am helpin’ about the stock-takin’ under the 
deputy sheriff — doin’ liftin’ and truckin’,” replied 
the man. “ Mr. Wellington was in the office ten 
minutes ago. Mr. Clegg is down sick at home in 
Brooklyn. I hear somebody cornin’ now ; you 
can go in with me if you wish. The public is 
excluded, but just come right on up. It will be 
your best chance.” 

The door was opened by the elevator boy. 

“Got to walk up,” he informed the laborer; 
“ they told me to stop running.” 

The man grumbled as he began to mount the 
stairs. Wilmot followed deliberately. 

On the office floor, behind a counter framed 
with glass, stood Mr. Wellington. He was slender, 
middle-aged, with iron-gray hair, and looked 
nervous and tired. The boy opened the gate and 
Wilmot went in and introduced himself. 

“Yes, yes, I remember the story,” said Well- 
ington in the tone of a man who is endeavoring 
to be courteous under trying circumstances. “The 
last letter I had from you was from the South. 
By Jove,” he added bitterly, *‘you got here in a 
hurry ! Bad news travels fast, and so do those 
who receive it.” 

“I was already in New York, but did not hear 
of your trouble till yesterday.” Wilmot spoke 


The Woman Who Trusted 87 

gently. The aspect of the man, with his rumpled 
hair and blood-shot eyes, roused his pity, and 
almost caused him to lose sight of his own misfor- 
tune. 

“ Well, you have certainly acted more decently 
than the others. I believe they would have torn 
me limb from limb, yesterday, if they could have 
got at me. I wish I could help you ; I know that’s 
what you came for, but I am as helpless as a 
child. The whole business is in the hands of the 
deputy sheriff, and nothing I could say would 
have any weight. If it were not for this trouble, 
Mr. Burian, I’d ask you to lunch with me and talk 
over ‘ The Achievements of a Modern Saint.’ I 
don’t read all our books, but our best reader 
spoke so enthusiastically about the original treat- 
ment of your novel and its dramatic force that I 
took the manuscript home with me. My wife 
read it first, and kept me awake telling me about 
the plot till after two o’clock one night, then I liter- 
ally devoured the story. It is a rattling good thing, 
and if I am not mistaken you have produced a 
splendid seller.” 

Wilmot thanked him. “I hoped,” he ventured, 
“ that I might get the manuscript and offer it else- 
where.” 

“That’s what they all want,” frowned Well- 


83 


The Woman Who Trusted 


ington, and his tone suddenly grew cold. “ But 
I can do nothing. The manuscripts are all locked 
in the vaults and the deputy sheriff has the 
combination. Our affairs are very much com- 
plicated. We have a branch house in Chicago, 
and a printing establishment in New Haven, and 
nothing can be touched till a complete settlement 
is made all round.” 

“And it would be sometime before I could get 
possession of the manuscript.” 

“Three or four months, if at all,” said Mr. 
Wellington. “News-dealers and booksellers all 
over the country owe us for consigned books, 
and all those accounts must be settled. You see, 
we hold your contract to allow us the right to 
publish the story, and there was no stipulation as 
to the date of publication.” 

“But surely,” replied Wilmot with awakening 
spirit, “if your house fails and alters its name, or 
style of doing business, I have a right to with- 
draw my manuscript since it was with Wellington 
and Clegg I made the contract.” 

The publisher smiled wearily. 

“That would be a question for the court to 
decide, and such a decision could not be reached 
without a good deal of expense, nor before we 
know positively if we shall be in a shape to use 


The Woman Who Trusted 89 

the book ourselves — in case we are allowed to 
continue business.” 

“ I understand,” answered Wilmot, “and I am 
sorry I disturbed you so unnecessarily.” 

Wellington's wan face took on a faint sug- 
gestion of sympathy. 

“You are certainly a good-natured fellow,” he 
said ; “ and I am very sorry to interfere with your 
plans at all. I promise if I see any way to aid 
you in the matter I’ll do it.” 

Wilmot lost no time in going to the office of 
King and Burton, and sending in Harrison’s note 
to Lester by the office-boy. Lester came out 
himself in a few moments. 

“I am glad to know you, Mr. Burian,” he said; 
“Mr. Harrison writes me that you want to see us 
in regard to your literary work. I am now 
occupied chiefly with matters pertaining to our 
journal, the Literary Day , but if you will come in 
I will introduce you to our manager, Mr. Richard 
Soul. He is in his office now” — pointing to the 
rooms on the right — “just wait here till I see if 
he is disengaged.” 

In a moment Lester returned. “Come in,” he 
said, opening the door leading to the editorial 
rooms; “he is a nice, approachable man, and is 
very popular with our writers.” 


90 


The Woman Who Trusted 


After shaking hands with Mr. Soul, Wilmot 
sat down by his desk and briefly related his ex- 
periences concerning the placing of his manu- 
script with Wellington and Clegg. 

“You certainly made a mistake, ” Mr. Soul 
said, when he had finished, “and had you been 
on the spot, I am sure you would have shown the 
manuscript to some other house before you let 
them have it. I wish I could help you. Iam 
very much interested in what you have told me, 
and while I am not in the position to make any 
promises about our bringing out the book — not 
having seen it — yet I will say that I hope you will 
give us the opportunity to see the story if you get 
hold of it again. Perhaps you retained a copy 
of it.” 

“I did not.” 

“That’s bad.” 

Mr. Soul picked up his pen and drew a pad 
of paper towards him, and Wilmot understood 
that the conversation was at an end. He rose. 

“I know I am taking up valuable time,” he 
said. 

“I have just remembered overlooking an im- 
portant letter,” said Mr. Soul apologetically, and 
he extended his hand. “I am not in a position 
to help you, anyway, not having the opinion of 


The Woman Who Trusted 


9 1 


our readers on your story. But if you get hold 
of the manuscript you will confer a favor on us 
by allowing us to examine it” 

Wilmot went down into the crowded street. 
The sun was beating hotly upon the pavements, 
and the roar and bustle of the great thorough* 
fare jarred on him unpleasantly. An elevated 
train thundered along overhead, throwing its mov- 
ing shadow on the walls of the buildings. He 
thought of the unfinished short story on his table, 
and turned homeward. He was not sure that he 
could write a line with that awful fear of poverty 
upon him, but he intended to try. He would 
endeavor, also, to keep his mind off the novel on 
which he had based so many hopes. But this was 
hard to do ; it seemed that a vital part of him was 
held in bondage. 


CHAPTER XI. 


S President of the Dadeville Literary Club, 



** Miss Sarah Benson secretly resented 
Muriel’s not taking part in the weekly meetings. 
She was compelled to admit that Muriel had 
received more advantages than any other girl in 
the village, and was, therefore, all the more fitted 
to fulfil the duties Miss Sarah would willingly 
have assigned to her. 

Muriel had traveled; she had been to big 
watering places in the North, and while Muriel had 
never boasted of the fact, it had been whispered 
among the club members that she actually knew 
Miss Mary Dyke, the New England writer of 
character stories.' It was said that Miss Fairchild 
had met her while studying in New York and 
that an enduring friendship had sprung up be- 
tween them. 

Miss Sarah thought that it would be quite a 
feather in the cap of her club if she could manage 
to secure such a brilliant literary star as Miss 
Dyke to read to the club from her famous stories 
and thought that her desire might be gained if 
Muriel would invite Miss Dyke to pay her a visit. 

She was on her way down to see Muriel now. 


92 


The Woman Who Trusted 


93 


So many people had smiled at her failure to in- 
duce Muriel to join her movement that she had 
determined to make a more strenuous effort in 
that direction. Muriel was too influential to be 
passed over. 

Miss Sarah took strong, new-womanish steps. 
She was tall, erect, thirty-five, stern-featured and 
full of plans for the uplifting of her down-trodden 
sex. The girls said she did not know how to 
dress, but that did not matter, for she was in- 
tellectual. 

Muriel saw her coming across the lawn and 
stifled a little cry of disappointment that drew her 
mother’s eyes to the window. 

“ You really must go in, daughter,” said Mrs. 
Fairchild. “She told me at prayer-meeting the 
other day that she was coming to see you.” 

Muriel sighed as she arranged her hair at the 
glass and her mother sent the servant to invite 
the visitor into the parlor. It was a very warm 
afternoon three days after Wilmot’s departure. 
Muriel had put on her prettiest organdie, a dainty 
sky blue affair made over silk, and she had never 
appeared to a better advantage. 

“I hope I am not keeping you from going 
out,” said Miss Sarah, rising. 

“Oh, not in the least!” said Muriel. “Sit 


94 


The Woman Who Trusted 


down; I may go out when it is cooler, but I have 
plenty of time.” 

Miss Benson resumed her chair and began to 
rock. Her shoes had low heels and were broad 
and thick-soled. It was plain that she had some- 
thing to say. 

“I came to talk to you about the prospectus 
of our club,” she began. ‘‘We have the best 
programme for next fall that I have ever arranged. 
You really must join us. You are setting a bad 
example to other girls in town. Two have already 
said that they wouldn’t join any movement you 
are not in.” 

“How foolish of them,” said Muriel, color- 
ing. “I can not, however, become a member. 
The truth is, I am trying to prevail on papa to 
allow me to resume my vocal lessons in New 
York and I think he will finally consent.” 

Miss Sarah’s chair had come to a stand-still, 
but it started on again with increased impetus. 

“Ah!” she ejaculated, and she flushed with 
mixed disappointment and anger. “Dadeville 
was never good enough for you. You are going 
away again. I presume you will settle down and 
live among the Yankees before long.” 

“I can not get the vocal training here that I 
need, that is certain,” said Muriel, biting her lip 
to hide a smile which she could not restrain. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


95 


The President of the literary club shrugged 
her shoulders ; her lip curled ; this young chip of 
a female should not see that she was necessary to 
the literary progress of Dadeville. 

“I really was not sure how you would do, Mu- 
riel, even if you joined,” she said, with an acid 
glance at Muriel’s dress and dainty slippers. “ I 
have found that many of the girls who are con- 
sidered fairly bright can not write a paper on the 
most ordinary topic. They do not seem to have 
the power to grasp what is needed.” 

Muriel was only human. She allowed herself 
to smile quite broadly at this thrust. 

“And yet,” she observed calmly, “some of 
them must really be all that even you could wish, 
Miss Sarah. Someone told me that little Addie 
Turner, who is surely not sixteen, read a wonder- 
fully comprehensive paper on the ‘ Culminative 
Period of German Literature.’” 

Miss Sarah winced; her glance wavered, but 
she was not defeated. 

“Oh, yes, some of my girls are developing. 
There is no mistake about that.” Then she 
remained silent a moment before firing a shot 
that she had ready. 

“I understand, Muriel, that you are respon- 
sible for Wilmot Burian’s giving up his profession 
and going to New York.” 


9 6 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ Oh,” said Muriel changing color slightly. 
“ I could not flatter myself that I could influence 
him either to stay or go.” 

“Well, you had much to do with it, you may 
be sure of that,” said Miss Benson almost sneer- 
ing. “No one else here has praised his little 
stories except you. Really you ought to have 
shown him that it was a silly thing for him to hope 
to make his way among men of letters. Why, 
he is not even a well-read man. I once drew him 
out just to see if there was anything in him, but 
really he does not seem to know much.” 

“ Have you ever read one of his sketches, 
Miss Sarah ?” 

Muriel leaned forward and gazed into the 
face of the old maid. 

“Yes, one,” replied Miss Benson, “and I am 
sorry to have to say that it had absolutely nothing 
in ft. Who wants to know anything about these 
mountain people and their wretched dialect that 
we have heard all our lives.” 

“I am a warm friend of his,” returned Muriel 
coldly, “and I may be prejudiced in his favor, but 
I don’t think I am. I have liked everything he has 
produced. His novel, which he allowed me to 
read in the manuscript, was beautifully written — 
carefully written. There is no dialect in it, but 


The Woman Who Trusted 97 

even if there were, the dialect of all sections 
ought to be preserved.” 

“You have more to be sorry for than I 
thought,” interrupted Miss Benson. “ Now, if I 
had encouraged a young lawyer to give up his 
profession and go into literature, and he had 
gone off and met with such a disaster as has be- 
fallen Wilmot Burian I should not be so satisfied 
about it — so unconcerned as you seem.” 

“ Disaster !” repeated Muriel, off her guard, 
“ why, what do you mean?” 

“ Have you not heard the news ?” 

“I do not know what you are talking about,” 
answered Muriel, staring fixedly at the speaker. 
“What has happened to him?” 

“Well, really I may be making a mistake, so 
I ought not to listen to gossip without knowing 
whether it is true or not. But it seems to me 
that when he left our home paper mentioned that 
his novel had been accepted by Wellington and 
Clegg of New York. Am I correct in the 
name r 

“Yes, that was the firm,” said Muriel, paling 
in suspense ; “but what about it?” 

A glow of victory lighted up the stern features 
of Miss Benson. For a moment she simply fin- 
gered her notebook and pencil in her lap, then : 


98 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“My father takes the New York Progress , and 
the paper which came this morning says that Well- 
ington and Clegg have just failed.” 

Muriel could only stare at Miss Benson help- 
lessly. 

“ Failed ?” she gasped, “ are you sure ?” 

“Quite sure, and that is not all. The paper 
says many young authors are wild with dis- 
appointment, because it seems they can not, 
for some legal reason, get possession of their 
manuscripts. It is said that many authors will 
lose heavily by the failure. My father thinks 
Wilmot Burian had paid a considerable sum to 
the publishers, and that he will lose every cent 
of it.” 

“I know personally,” gasped Muriel, “ thathe 
did not pay them any money.” 

“ Oh, of course, he would not confess it to 
you — it would not be natural for him to do so, 
but it is more than likely that he did. Father 
thinks that they accepted it just on the eve of ruin 
without even reading it and simply to get his 
money. It is reported all over town that he has 
lost all he had and is absolutely in want up there. 
If I had been in your place, Muriel, I should have 
shown him that it is a presumptous thing for him 
to aspire so high.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


99 


“I know — absolutely know that Wilmot did 
not pay them any money,” said Muriel in a tone 
full of agony, “and I hope you will contradict the 
report wherever you hear it mentioned.” 

But the request fell on closed ears. That was 
a phase of the situation Miss Benson did not 
want to believe in. For years she had been the 
chief literary light of Dadeville, and she was far 
from being ready to admit that another in the 
town — a young unsuccessful lawyer had actually 
had a book accepted that had merit in it. She 
rose, the better to divest herself of the sug- 
gestion advanced by Muriel, and hoping that 
Muriel would come to see her soon, and think 
better of her decision in regard to the club, she 
departed. 

Muriel stood in the front door, watching Miss 
Benson walk stiffly down to the gate. When the 
visitor had disappeared, she turned back into the 
drawing-room and sank on a lounge. 

Mrs. Fairchild came to her a few minutes 
later. 

“What is the matter, darling?” she asked 
tenderly. She sat down by her daughter and 
drew her white face to her shoulder. 

“Oh, mamma, Wilmot has met with such a 
misfortune! He — ” Muriel choked up and 
went no farther. 

7 — Woman Who Trusted 


IOO 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“I know, darling,” said Mrs. Fairchild. “Your 
father has just told me of the report in town. I 
am so sorry for him. It is such a great blow. I 
wish he were here now. I’d comfort him. I’d 
show him more friendship than I have done. I 
would, darling, for your sake.” 

Muriel covered her face with her hands. She 
seemed trying in vain to sob. 

“Cry, darling,” said Mrs. Fairchild, her own 
eyes filling; “cry. It will do you good.” And 
then with her head in her mother’s lap, Muriel 
burst into tears and sobbed over the greatest 
sorrow she had ever known. 


CHAPTER XII. 


T WAS afraid you would not come/’ said Mrs. 

Sennett to Wilmot when he called in 
obedience to his promise on the afternoon of his 
visit to Mr. Soul’s office. She came to meet him, 
holding an ugly pug dog in her arms. 

“I almost missed your message,” said Wilmot. 
“Chester was very busy, it seems, and forgot to 
deliver it till half an hour ago.” 

“I am certainly glad he thought of it in time,” 
smiled Mrs. Sennett. “I think if you hadn’t 
come I should have driven round to your house 
on the way to the park to ask about you. I have 
been so much worried over your bad news. It 
kept me awake nearly all last night. You have a 
very refined, sensitive face, and although you 
tried to appear unconcerned yesterday, I saw you 
were suffering tortures. I am awfully sorry for 
you.” 

Wilmot sank into the soft cushions of a lux- 
urious lounge. Her words and manner were 
soothing, and a sensation of restful languor stole 
over him. The artistic splendor of the room, the 
glimpses through drawn portieres of other rooms 
equally attractive, appealed to his appreciation 


IOI 


102 


The Woman Who Trusted 


of the beautiful. The soft strains of the piano 
and violin in an adjoining apartment were heard, 
and a delicate perfume of violets permeated the 
air. 

“It’s good of you to invite me here,” he said. 
“I hardly knew what to do with myself this after- 
noon. I found this morning that I could not 
recover that manuscript, and, as I seem unable to 
get to work, there seems nothing before me, ex- 
cept to walk the streets, and — ” 

“And you are really too tired for that,” inter- 
rupted Mrs. Sennett. “You needn’t deny it; I 
can see it in your eyes.” She put her pet on the 
floor, and brought another pillow to him. “ Don’t 
refuse me,” she said, arranging it on the lounge; 
“you shall not be formal with me even if it is 
your first call. Put your head on this, and lie 
down, and rest.” 

“O, no, thank you !” he said quickly. “I am 
all right.” 

“Do as I tell you !” commanded Mrs. Sennett. 
She reached for a cut-glass decanter in a stand of 
silver, and poured out a glass of cordial. “Drink 
this while I am preparing the tea, and lie down or 
I shall not like you.” 

Blushingly he obeyed. He had never done 
such a thing in his life, yet it seemed a natural 


The Woman Who Trusted 


103 


thing to do. She crossed the room, set an electric 
fan in motion, then came back to the table, and 
rang a bell. The maid entered with a tray con- 
taining tea cups of rare, fragile china, a copper 
tea-kettle, swinging over a spirit-lamp, and a 
dainty Dresden tea-pot. 

“Dot will stay with you,” she said, lifting the 
dog to a place beside him. “As a rule he does 
not like strangers, and cuts up very badly, but he 
has taken a fancy to you.” 

“Even your dog is hospitable,” observed Wil- 
mot, with a smile. 

Mrs. Sennett laughed. 

“One would know by that remark that you 
are a Southerner,” she said. “Southerners know 
how to flatter! I repeat, sir, that you are going 
to make a great social success here this season. 
After you left yesterday, Mrs. Langdon and I 
were absolutely flooded with questions about you. 
You must not think too much about your work, 
and ought to go in for a good time.” 

“My plans are unsettled since the failure of 
my publishers,” said he. 

Mrs. Sen nett’s smile vanished. She looked 
older when serious. Still it was not easy for him 
to realize that she had lived twenty years longer 
than he. The room had been purposely dark* 


104 The Woman Who Trusted 

ened, and the rays from the pink globes gave 
a rosy tint to her complexion. The mass of silky 
brown hair was not her own, but he was too 
genuine to suspect that fact. 

“What is the trouble?” she asked, lighting 
the spirit-lamp, and bending low to see if it were 
burning evenly. “I can not get possession of the 
manuscript. The matter is tied up indefinitely.” 

“And it is the work of several months, I 
presume,” said the woman, drawing herself up 
and looking down on him sympathetically. 

“Of years,” he answered, simply. 

“Oh,” she exclaimed, almost as if the word 
had been evoked by a sudden shock, “what a 
shame!” She sat down at the tea-table, and 
leaned her head on her jeweled hand. He saw 
her start as with a sudden inspiration, and then : 

“Money will do anything these days; have 
you thought of bribery?” He smiled grimly as 
he remembered the few dollars in his possession 
and the gloomy outlook ahead of him. 

“I don’t think it would do any good,” he re- 
plied evasively; “besides it would seem hard to 
have to pay for one’s just rights.” 

“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully; “but 
still if your career is suffering because that book 
is tied up in a financial ruin, I should think even 


The Woman Who Trusted 105 

bribery would be justifiable. Now is the time 
for the book to appear, and it must — I say it must , 
my friend!” 

He could formulate no reply. The awful un- 
pleasantness of his condition fell upon his con- 
sciousness with redoubled weight. He would be 
unable to maintain himself longer in the metrop- 
olis, and there was nothing for him to do except 
to return to Dadeville while he still had enough 
money for the journey. He heard his fathers 
sneering remarks and the galling gossip of the 
town. He imagined himself meeting Muriel, 
and felt his blood beat hotly in his face. 

“Will you have cream and sugar?” Mrs. 
Sennett was proffering a cup of tea. He nodded 
and thanked her. Then she changed the subject 
adroitly, and under the charm of her conversation 
he felt his heart growing lighter, and before he 
knew it, six o’clock struck. 

“Will you not promise to come to see me to- 
morrow afternoon at four?” she asked, following 
him to the door leading to the elevator. “I shall 
want to see you particularly.” 

“I will come,” said he hesitatingly, “if — ” 

“I want no ifs about it,” she said, “can I 
count on you at four o’clock sharp?” 

“Thank you, I shall come,” he promised. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


AN you call at once to see us in regard to 



the manuscript in the possession of Wel- 
lington & Clegg ?” 


“Yours truly, 


“King & Burton.” 


That was the message Wilmot received just 
after he had breakfasted the following morning. 
He had started to work on his short story, but 
put on his hat, and caught a down-town car for 
the publishing house. 

In the sales-room below the editorial offices, 
Wilmot met Lester, who paused to speak to him. 

“ I presume you are going up to Mr. Soul’s 
office,” he remarked. “ I can’t imagine what he 
wants. He asked me for your address late yes- 
terday afternoon. He is there now, and happens 
to be disengaged, you’d better go up at once.” 

As Wilmot entered, Richard Soul smiled gen- 
ially, and pushed a chair to the side of his desk. 

“ Glad to see you so promptly, sit down and 
have a smoke,” he said, taking a cigar from a 
box, and pushing it towards his visitor. 

Wilmot declined. He wondered what could 
have happened to have caused the manager to be 


106 


The Woman Who Trusted 107 

so very cordial, and smile so knowingly. For a 
moment neither spoke. Mr. Soul lighted a 
match, watched the flame grow round and white 
in the palm of his hand, and then he began to 
smoke. 

“What luck with Wellington and Clegg ?” 
he asked, leaning back in his easy chair. 

“None at all ; I haven’t seen them since I 
talked with you.” 

“Why?” 

The word seemed to cut a round hole in the 
smoke about the manager’s face. 

“ I did not think it would do any good to dis- 
turb them further. W ellington said he could do 
nothing for me. Besides he hopes that they may 
make a settlement of some sort and resume 
publication ; in that case, they might use the 
book.” 

“ Would you rather have us bring it out?” 

“Yes, decidedly; I had no idea till I got to 
New York that they had such a small concern, 
nor did I know of the magnitude of your busi- 
ness.” 

Richard Soul smiled. 

“We have really the largest house on this side 
of the water, and an important branch in London. 
We have it in our power to do more for a new 


io8 


The Woman Who Trusted 


writer than any three publishing houses in 
America.” 

“I can easily believe it,” replied Wilmot, still 
studying the face of the manager. 

Mr. Soul seemed to have an appreciation for 
dramatic situations. He fixed Wilmot’s face with 
a sharp, studious gaze, and said : 

“I suppose you could not easily get possession 
of that manuscript, but if you had the story and 
offered it to me, I should pass it on without 
looking at it.” 

Wilmot’s heart sank. It seemed to him that 
the smile of the manager was mocking him. He 
pulled himself together and tried to speak indiffer- 
ently. 

“You mean that you would refuse it without 
even reading it?” 

“I mean that I would accept it.” 

Wilmot stared. Could it be possible that Mr. 
Soul was jesting with him? 

“You would accept it without giving it a 
reading?” he asked incredulously. 

Mr. Soul rang his bell, and as the office-boy 
entered, he gave him some letters to post. 

“Yes, I should take it without reading it,” he 
said, after the boy had gone. Silence fell for a 
moment; hundreds of thoughts were battling in 


The Woman Who Trusted 109 

the brain of the young author. Mr. Soul sat 
smiling in the smoke of his cigar. 

“You really surprise me/' Wilmot presently 
said. 

“I knew you would be surprised,” said the 
manager, breaking into a laugh. “ Something 
has happened in regard to your story in the shape 
of a rare coincidence. I’ll tell you about it. Five 
minutes after you left yesterday, a man called. 
He sat in the chair you are in now. He was one 
of our best readers. At odd times he reads for 
other houses. He has been reading regularly for 
Wellington and Clegg, but never acknowledged 
it till they failed. We were talking about their 
editorial judgment yesterday, and of his own 
accord, he spoke of having read a Southern novel 
for them, which he said was one of the finest 
stories he had seen in many years. I asked him 
who the author was, and he mentioned your 
name. He thinks the book will undoubtedly 
make a hit. Of course, I did not tell him you 
had come to me. But I want to say seriously, if 
you can possibly get hold of your property that 
we want to bring it out. If we handle it, we will 
put you before the public in a number of ways, 
beginning with a big edition.” 

“Can you think of any way by which I can 


no 


The Woman Who Trusted 


get the manuscript?” asked Wilmot, almost 
under his breath. 

“I can not ; our reader says Wellington is a 
good-hearted fellow, but that Clegg is as mean as 
men are made. They intend to make some sort 
of compromise with their creditors, and resume 
business, taking their time about using accepted 
manuscripts. If they go ahead, the law would 
probably hold you to your contract, and I am 
sorry to say it looks as if they are going to 
resume. You certainly made a great mistake in 
offering it to such an unreliable house. As far as 
we are concerned we don’t take up any but 
promising people. There are a dozen widely 
read authors in this country whose names should 
not appear on our catalogues if they offered us 
their books for nothing. We avoid sensations. 
We once accepted a good book by a young 
woman from the West, and just before publica- 
tion she raised a big sensation by going on the 
stage, and getting mixed up in several unpleasant 
affairs, and we returned her manuscript. She 
offered to run it under a nom de plume , but we 
still refused. We do not have to depend on that 
sort of thing to circulate our books, and it would 
not be just to our authors to list them with such 
people.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 1 1 1 

4f 

“I think you are right, ” said Wilmot, rising. 
“ And I am sorry I cannot turn my manuscript 
over to you.” 

The manager held out his hand. 

“.I really wish we could handle your book,” 
he said, “ and if by any accident you should get 
it away from those people, bring it round.” 

The rest of that morning Wilmot spent roam- 
ing about the streets. In his wanderings, he 
found himself near noon in front of Wellington 
and Clegg’s. The door was closed, and on it 
was nailed a notice which read, “ Positively no 
admittance to anyone.” 

While he stood there, he heard steps on the 
stairs within. 

The door opened, and the same laborer to 
whom he had spoken the day before came out. 

'‘You can’t see anybody to-day,” he said cor- 
dially. “ They would cuss you black and blue. 
Mr. Clegg is up there in charge. He threatened 
to kick an author down stairs just now for beg- 
ging for his manuscript. Clegg says they are 
going ahead and intend to manage their own 
affairs. Was it about a book you wanted to see 
’em ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t bother ’em. I heard a 


1 1 2 


The Woman Who Trusted 


young author tell Mr. Clegg he’d be satisfied to 
have ’em publish his novel any time in the next 
two years.” 

Wilmot thanked the man and went back to 
his room, took up his pen and tried to work, but 
he could think of nothing save the opportunity he 
was losing by not being able to get possession of 
his manuscript. It was past luncheon time, but 
he had no appetite. 


CHAPTER XIV. 



HAT can be the matter ?” Mrs. Sennett 


* * asked Wilmot that afternoon as he en- 
tered her drawing-room. “You look pale and 
completely fagged out. You need not deny it, 
you are still worrying over that manuscript !” 

“I can not dispute it,” he replied, and then 
he told her of his conversation with Mr. Soul. 

“So you really would like to get possession 
of the manuscript,” the woman said, her eyes 
twinkling. 

“ I can think of nothing I desire more,” he 
answered, despondently. “If I had it, you see, 
I could at once place it with King and Burton.” 

“And would they satisfy you as publishers?” 

“They would be my choice out of all New 
York.” Mrs. Sennett leaned nearer to him. 
She seemed excited. 

“I wonder if you would scold me if you dis- 
covered that I had been meddling in your affairs,” 
she said, without raising her eyes. 

“I should be pleased to know you were inter- 
ested in them at all,” he said, studying her face, 
and wondering what she was hinting at. She 
looked straight into his eyes, her own were 
sparkling. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


114 

“You remember/’ said she, “that you told 
me how anxious you were to recover the manu- 
script. Well, I knew it was no business of mine, 
and that you might not like my interference, but 
I could not rest until I had seen Mr. Wellington 
myself. So the first thing this morning, I put on 
my prettiest gown, wore my diamonds, and drove 
down there in my carriage.” 

“What!” he exclaimed, “you went — ” 

“Don’t interrupt me,” she broke in. “I 
know you are going to scold me for being so 
bold and presumptuous, but after thinking it all 
over I could not help it. I have met Mr. 
Wellington several times, and happen to know 
that he treats women with far more consideration 
than he does men. I sent up for Mr. Wellington. 
A man will go to a woman in her carriage when 
he wouldn’t go to her anywhere else. Ordinarily 
he feels he has a right to retreat or hide but he 
never will fail to go to a well-dressed woman in 
her own brougham. 

“Well, he came down ink-stained, care-worn, 
and not particularly well-groomed. At first he 
wouldn’t give me the slightest encouragement, 
but I had managed to get to him about lunch time 
and asked him to drive with me to Delmonico’s. 
He consented. The drive in the fresh air seemed 


The Woman Who Trusted 1 15 

to do him good. He kept looking at me. The 
old rascal thought I was indiscreet. At the 
table, when he caught sight of what I ordered to 
eat, he warmed up and returned of his own 
accord to the battle-field. 

“ ‘That young man has a promising out-look, 
Mrs. Sennett,’ he said. 

“ ‘If we can keep life in him,’ I answered. 

“‘Is he ill?’ Wellington asked, too much 
under the spell of the dinner to follow me closely. 

“ ‘ Not in a physical sense,’ I replied. ‘ But 
we’ll never get much out of him if his best work 
is buried in the debris of other men’s ventures.’ 

“ ‘ That’s a fact, Mrs. Sennett,’ he replied 
sheepishly, as if he had no right to disagree with 
me and eat my dinners. ‘ I am willing to release 
my claim to the book, but the deputy sheriff is in 
charge, and then Clegg would never give his 
consent — you see we hope to resume. I am sorry 
for Burian ; he looks worried. The truth is, 
however, that it all depends on the deputy sheriff.’ 

“ ‘Is he fond of good dinners?’ I asked. 

“ ‘ He has a jealous wife who watches him 
like a hawk,’ said Wellington; ‘but I will give 
you a suggestion, Mrs. Sennett,’ he went on 
attacking the pate de foie gras as if he had not 
dined in a week. ‘ I really believe he is a man 

8 — Woman Who Trusted 


The Woman Who Trusted 


1 16 

who would not despise a tip — that is, to serve a 
lady. Now if you would see him and tell him 
I am willing to let you have the manuscript, he 
might really — ’ 

“ ‘I understand,’ I replied; and then I changed 
the subject. We spent an hour at the table, and 
when we rose it was half past two. Then I asked 
for the deputy sheriff’s address. He gave it to 
me, and we parted. I drove down to the City 
Hall as fast as I could. 

“The deputy sheriff was not in, but his assist- 
ant was, and I lost no time in making him an offer, 
telling him I wanted the matter settled without 
delay. He went into an adjoining room and I 
heard him telephoning to someone. Then he 
came back to me and said the matter could be 
easily arranged, that the deputy sheriff was then 
up at Wellington and Clegg’s, and that if I would 
call to-morrow, I should have the manuscript. 
The plan did not suit me. I wanted to strike 
while the iron was hot, besides I knew you were 
coming to see me this afternoon, and I wanted to 
save you from another restless night. 

“ ‘I want the matter attended to now,’ I said 
firmly. ‘Can’t you give me a written order for 
it ?’ 

“He seemed to approve of my suggestion, 


The Woman Who Trusted 117 

but after he had written a note, and carefully 
sealed it with wax, he held it hesitatingly in his 
hand. 

“ ‘Can't you call here to-morrow, or tell me 
where to send the manuscript?' he asked, 
dubiously. 

“ ‘I want it this afternoon, or not at all,' I re- 
plied, and I took my purse from my pocket. 

“ ‘I'll bring the manuscript to any address you 
name within an hour from now,’ he said eagerly. 
‘I’ll go up to Wellington and Clegg’s after it my- 
self.' 

“ ‘My carriage is at the door, can't I drive 
you there?’ I suggested. 

“ ‘With pleasure,’ he answered, as if relieved, 
and we rode up Broadway side by side. I felt 
like a thief set to catch a thief, but I was in my 
best gown and in his rough office clothes, he 
furnished a contrast that was in my favor.” 

Wilmot stared at her breathlessly. 

“Did you get it?” he asked. 

Mrs. Sennett rose and brought a package 
from her desk. 

“I waited outside while he went into the pub- 
lishers’ office. Here it is, every page of it, even 
the contract you signed. I thought they might 
give you trouble, so I refused to reward him till 


1 1 8 The Woman Who Trusted 

he had secured the contract. He said Mr. Well- 
ington gave it to him.” 

Wilmot opened the parcel and ran through 
the type-written sheets. “It is all right,” he said, 
you have saved me, Mrs. Sennett.” 

“ I am glad to see you so happy over it.” 

“You must tell me how much — of course, I 
want to pay for — -” 

“If you begin to talk that way, we shall 
quarrel,” interrupted Mrs. Sennett. “I did it 
for my own amusement, and I would not have 
missed the excitement of it for any amount.” 

“ But, I shall—” 

“ Please don’t say any more about it,” broke 
in Mrs. Sennett, “ or I shall feel uncomfortable. 
It is really not worth mentioning.” 


CHAPTER XV. 



OU are a very lucky man,” said Chester one 


* night about a week later, as they left the 
cafe, where they usually dined, and turned into 
Broadway. “Your ups and downs would make a 
good story. And now that King and Burton 
have taken you up, there is absolutely nothing 
under your chariot wheels. ,, 

“But I must really get at something right 
away,” answered Wilmot, his eyes on the glare 
of the lights of Madison Square ahead of them. 
You see, I can’t expect to draw anything from 
my book till it has been out three months, and it 
will be six weeks before it is published.” 

“Have you written nothing lately?” asked 
Chester. 

“Only one short story. I sent it to the 
Decade , hoping that the editor would recall that 
unfortunate blunder of mine, and at least give it 
a reading.” 

“Have you heard from him yet?” 

“I only posted it yesterday.” 

“I am inclined to think you may get in there. 
The editor is bound to respect you for your un- 
professional honesty in returning that check.” 


120 


The Woman Who Trusted 


They entered one of the walks in Madison 
Square, and sat down near the fountain. The 
night was warm, and the spray cooled the air. 
Here they sat for more than an hour talking of 
old times and their hopes for the future. At one 
time Wilmot thought his friend was going to 
make him his confidant in regard to Miss Wey- 
land, but Chester seemed purposely to avoid 
mentioning her name. 

When they were returning to their rooms, 
they saw that the door of Frank Harrison's 
apartment was open. The poet was reading at a 
table on which stood a tall lamp with a green por- 
celain shade. 

“ I say, come in, you fellows," he called out as 
he heard them passing. 

Chester paused at the door. “ I am going up 
to the studio," he said. “ Do you know if the 
Weylands are in?" 

“They went up just now," replied Harrison, 
rising. 

“You have nothing to do, Mr. Burian, have 
you ?" asked the poet. “ Come in awhile. James 
Fitch Ellerton is in the library looking over my 
reference book. He’ll be through in a moment. 
I want you to know him. He is a type for you." 

Wilmot accepted the invitation and Chester 


The Woman Who Trusted 


I 2 I 


went up to the studio. Harrison stepped to the 
threshold of the library adjoining. 

“I say, Ellerton,” he called out. “Come in 
here/’ 

“ I’m coming,” a voice answered. “It’s fright- 
fully hot in this room/’ 

The speaker finished his observation standing 
in the doorway. He was a tall, blonde young 
man with a straggling moustache, long tow-colored 
hair, and aquiline features. 

“You did right,” said Harrison. “Let me 
introduce you to Mr. Burian, the Southern author 
our house has just taken up.” 

“ Happy to meet you,” said Ellerton, putting 
his pencil and note-book into his pocket, and sit- 
ting down in an easy chair. Harrison has been 
telling me of your good luck, and of your con- 
scientious methods. I haven’t read that sketch 
of yours, ‘ The Repentance of Milburn ’ yet, but 
its on my list. They say its great. I used to do 
careful work myself, but I quit it when I got 
real hard up, and now I am known as the worst 
hack in America. You could put me into a novel. 
I am a character.” 

“Make him tell you about it,” remarked Har- 
rison, penciling a note on a piece of paper. 

“ Nothing could please me more, I am sure,” 
replied Wilmot. 


122 The Woman Who Trusted 

Ellerton reached for a ham sandwich, in a 
plate on Harrison’s desk, and began to eat it. 

“I was doing first-class work for a beginner,” 
he mumbled. “No man’s out-look could have 
been brighter. I got married. My expenses 
accumulated. Mybest work brought good prices, 
but I couldn’t do it fast enough. One day Eve 
held out an apple to me. It was a check for 
$500 which she had received from the Evening 
Fireside , a fifth-class story paper. ‘ I made it in 
a month at odd times,’ said she, ‘and have kept 
up my better class work also.’ Eve was a young 
lady friend of mine who was doing work on the 
best magazines. The serial for which she had 
received the check was blood and thunder stuff, 
and appeared over a nom de plwne. 

“The next day my rent was due and the 
Columbian sent back a yarn I had worked on for 
a month. I thought Eve’s idea over and went to 
call on the editor of the Evening Fireside. She 
seemed pleased to talk about their needs and 
plans and gave me a stack of brain poison to 
look at. I saw at once I could do what she 
wanted and before I reached home I had a full- 
fledged plot twittering and hopping about in the 
empty places in my brain. Within the next 
month I had earned over $ 600 for a serial story 


The Woman Who Trusted 


123 


of high life in Russia (I have never been out of 
America) and. an account of a trip of mine to the 
North Pole in a flying machine. 

“ My wife felt proud of me for the first time 
since our marriage, and went and boomed me to 
the landlord. He took his hat off the next time I 
passed him, and all the women in the house called 
on my wife, and said that they had always in- 
tended to write fiction, but had been prevented 
by babies and things. I told myself I’d stick to 
the Evening Fireside till I owned a little house in 
Harlem. It took two years to make all the pay- 
ments, then I decided to return to respectability. 
I wrote a story, put my best polish on it and sent 
it to the Columbian. The editor sent it back, say- 
ing that he could not believe I had written it. He 
had blue-penciled it all over, and said he supposed 
I meant it as a joke. He ended by seriously 
asking me where I had been, and why I had given 
up literature.” 

“Did you give up conscientious work en- 
tirely?” asked Wilmot. 

“I had to; I couldn’t do it again if my life had 
depended on it. The temptation to earn money 
easily was stronger than my love of art. I have 
written nothing but trash for five years.” 

“And Eve?” Wilmot inquired, smiling; “what 
became of her?” 


1 24 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“She is editing the Evening Fireside on a 
salary of five thousand. In addition to editorial 
work, she is under contract to write six serial 
stories a year. She had three running at the 
same time last year under different names. She 
fell sick once and I had to take up the stories till 
she was well again. She was out of her head 
part of the time and I forgot what she wanted 
the characters to do, and got them in an awful 
tangle. But she rescued them finally, and said 
that the accident had been beneficial, as it had 
pulled her out of some old ruts on to new 
ground. ,, 

“You would not, then, advise a man to slight 
his work for the sake of earning money ?” said 
Wilmot. 

“Not unless he needs the money more than 
literary fame,” said Ellerton. “As for myself I 
don’t care a rap. I might not have set the world 
on fire anyway, and as it is, I can make my wife 
and children comfortable.” 


CHAPTER XVI. 


M Y dear Wilmot,” wrote Muriel Fairchild : 

‘'Your last letter bringing news of your 
final success with your novel after all the sorrow 
I had felt when I heard of Wellington and Clegg’s 
failure made me inexplicably happy! You see, 
I knew what it meant to you to be so far away 
among strangers and meet with such an awful 
blow — to have that first child of your brain held 
in bondage, as it were, when you had hoped to 
introduce it to the public. I cried when I heard 
it. I confess it. So did mamma. We sat to- 
gether and boo-hooed like two babies. She is 
your staunch friend now. It seems her eyes have 
been opened to what a writer has to undergo, 
and suffer to gain his point, and she admires you 
for undertaking so much. Nearly every day after 
the reception of the bad news she would inquire 
about what you were doing, and when I told her 
the other day that you had finally secured your 
manuscript and succeeded in placing it even more 
advantageously than before she actually clapped 
her hands. Even papa is leaning towards our 
side. Someone dared to say in his presence the 
other day that you had made a mistake in leaving 
Dadeville, and the dear old soul asked dryly: 
‘What, has he gone to the bad place?’ — only 
papa didn’t use a word with two syllables. 

“Your last letter was a genuine treat. I could 
never tell you how much I enjoyed it. The 
experiences you had with those two publishers 


126 


The Woman Who Trusted 


were absolutely thrilling. Your new friend Mrs. 
Sennett was certainly a, heroine. I am not sur- 
prised that you visit her so often, but you have 
forgotten that I am only a woman and possess 
my share of curiosity, else you would tell me 
more about her. Is she a widow, married, young 
or old, pretty or plain? Tell me what she is like, 
and what sort of gowns she wears. The truth is, 
my dear friend, that I suffered a good many pangs 
of jealousy when I read that she had secured your 
manuscript for you, when everything and every- 
one else had failed. Don't think me sentimental, 
but I have always wanted to help you in some 
material way, and have often been vexed at my 
helplessness. 

“I am going to give you a surprise. My 
teacher, Madame Angier is coming to Atlanta to 
give a recital, and has promised to pay me a short 
visit when she passes through Dadeville, the day 
after to-morrow. It is not settled yet, but 
Mamma says when Papa meets her, and sees 
what an admirable, discreet woman she is that he 
will allow me to return to New York with her 
next week. If I can come, I shall wire you when 
to meet us at the station in Jersey City.” 

Burian folded the letter and started out for a 
walk. He hoped she would come, and yet the 
prospect did not make him exactly happy. He 
was afraid she might discover the financial straits 
he was in. He would have liked, also, to be in a 
position to pay her attentions, to escort her to 


The Woman Who Trusted 127 

the theatres, to send her the flowers she loved, — 
in short, to have her see him as prosperous as 
Harrison or Chester. 

Wilmot 'spent the whole of the next day in 
visiting newspaper offices, trying to secure a 
position as editorial writer. In every case he 
found it impossible even to see the editor, being 
required in the anteroom of each office to write 
his name and the nature of his business on a card. 
The office-boy invariably returned with the 
message that every place was filled. 

Late in the afternoon he went over to Brook- 
lyn to see the editor of a daily paper. The 
editor was not at his office, and Wilmot, tired and 
disappointed, started back to New York. He 
had spent all his money for breakfast that 
morning, and for car-fare through the day, except 
a lonely five-cent piece which he found in his 
waistcoat pocket, after paying his bridge fare to 
New York. 

He felt very hungry, and decided not to 
spend it for anything but food. So, tired as he 
was, he began the long walk uptown. His 
hunger enticed him almost against his will to pass 
through the streets which contained cheap restau- 
rants. Once he lingered near one of those 
charitable institutions known as the one-cent 


128 


The Woman Who Trusted 


coffee and soup stands, but the sight of the men 
and boys in soiled clothes, who stood at the 
counter eating and drinking from the thick plates 
and cups drove him onward. 

Even the low restaurants, where sandwiches 
and meat pies could be obtained as cheap as five 
cents each, repulsed him. He felt instinctively 
that a man dressed as well as he would attract 
attention in such places and he shrank from 
entering them. 

He passed the door of a bar-room, and as a 
customer came through the swinging doors he 
caught sight of the free lunch counter inside. 
By paying five cents for a glass of beer he would 
have a right to partake of the tempting things 
heaped up in the great platters. He had heard 
Chester say he had eaten at such places, but 
Wilmot walked past the entrance twice before he 
summoned up the courage to go in. 

The customers, mostly rough laboring men, 
with luncheon-pails on their arms and short pipes 
in their mouths, stared at him as he paid for his 
glass of beer. He drank the beer slowly, the 
while eying the display of eatables. He decided 
that he would take a sandwich as he passed out. 
This he did, and ate it as he resumed his walk 
homeward. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


129 


Before going up to his room, he paused at a 
stationer's and looked at the latest issue of the 
Evening Fireside. He noticed a serial under a 
very sensational title, and wondered if it might 
be Ellerton’s. But the short stories claimed his 
special interest. They seemed like smaller sins 
than the long ones. The sentences and para- 
graphs were curt and striking. He fancied one 
of the tales might bring twenty dollars. 

Before he had reached his room a plot had 
come to him, and sitting down at his table, he 
dashed into the execution of a story. He was 
surprised to notice that he wrote easily and 
rapidly, and that it afforded him a sort of gratifi- 
cation that was somewhat akin to the feeling he 
had in producing better work. By two o’clock 
the story was finished. He ran over it, cutting 
out a word here and adding a phrase there, till 
the wording sounded smooth and thoroughly cor- 
rect. He left the manuscript on the table, and 
prepared for bed. 

“At least, I shall not starve,” he said. “If 
such things' are literary crimes this is not a capital 
offense, and it shall be the last. I have done it 
once, but I’ll never depart from the ideal track 
again. To-morrow I’ll try to sell it to the Evening 
Fireside , but no one — not even Chester shall ever 
know I did it.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 


HE next morning was Saturday. Wilmot 



A rang for a cup of coffee, and when Mrs. 
McGowan brought it, she had also a letter for 
him. It was from his mother. He drank his 
coffee, and then opened the letter. 

“Dear Wilmot:” it ran. “We all miss you 
so much. I wish you had not taken up the notion 
to live so far away from home. It seems to me 
you might do as well here in Dadeville if you 
want a quiet place to write in. You were always 
so strange in your ways, that I could not under- 
stand you, but now that you are gone I seem to 
know you better, and then so many people seem 
to make it their business to go round and hint 
that you are doing no good up there. It looks 
like they would not let you alone and wait and 
see what you will do. 

“You were always so good-natured that you 
kept down fusses when your father was out of 
temper, and since you left he seems more ill- 
humored than ever. He finds fault with every- 
thing and everybody. 

“He is awfully restless, too. He seems to 
have some trouble on his mind, for he doesn’t 
sleep soundly, and always seems suspicious that 
people in town are talking about his affairs. I 
am afraid lie has gone too. far in speculating in 
'futures/ and doesn’t want the Mill people to 


The Woman Who Trusted 131 

discover it. He is always getting telegrams, and 
won’t have them delivered at the store, for fear 
he will be found out. I wish you were here ; I 
am afraid he will end by getting into serious 
trouble. 

“ The stock at the store is low, and he told me 
he was going to New York to buy more goods. 
If he comes, you must see him and try to in- 
fluence him to stop speculation. If he were to 
lose his position, Laura and I would be destitute, 
for I know the shame of it all would ruin him.” 

Wilmot heard a step in the corridor, and the 
next instant Chester looked in, a doubtful smile 
on his face. 

“Here is something for you,” he said. “It 
was too large to get into the box, and the post- 
man left it with some papers of mine. It doesn’t 
look exactly right. It’s too big to be tender — 
like a foot-ball player.” 

Wilmot opened the long envelope, and Ches- 
ter looked out of the window. 

“It’s nothing but my story back from the 
Decade said Wilmot gloomily. 

Chester turned. “ I was afraid it was that, 
although I thought it stood a chance. What did 
they say ?” 

“ They honored me with only the printed form 
of declination.” 

“I wouldn’t let it worry me,” said Chester. 

9 — Woman Who Trusted 


132 The Woman Who Trusted 

“ The story may never have been read. Send it 
off again.” 

Just then Mrs. McGowan came to the door 
and paused hesitatingly. Thinking that she 
wanted to see Wilmot privately, Chester went 
out. He had just paid his own rent. 

The landlady entered the room. 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Burian,” she said, 
“ but my rent and gas bill is due, and this is the 
day I collect what is cornin’ to me all round.” 

Wilmot flushed. “I am sorry to say that I 
have not the money just now,” he said, “but I am 
going out to try to dispose of some work and I 
shall try to hand it to you to-day.” 

“Very well, sir, I wouldn’t bother you, but I 
have to pay my runnin’ expenses.” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 



‘HE editorial rooms of the Evening Fireside 


1 were five floors above the malodorous ware- 
rooms of an ink factory near the Brooklyn 
Bridge. The elevator was used only for freight ; 
the stairs were unlighted and narrow, and looked 
as if they had not been swept since they were 


built. 


The boy who took Wilmot’s card and dis- 
appeared somewhere behind the great stacks of 
dime novels, and bundles of story papers, re- 
turned in a few minutes with the information that 
Miss Underhill could be seen at her desk in the 
corner room on the right. Wilmot found her 
after a moment’s search. She was a large young 
woman, with a rather intellectual head, blue eyes, 
and a frank, open countenance. 

“I have the manuscript of a short story to 
submit for your examination,” he said in reply 
to her upward glance and genial smile. 

“ We shall be glad of the opportunity,” she 
replied, eying him with interest. “We have a 
good many contributors, who from long practice 
in our service, have learnt our peculiar needs in 
the way of fiction, but we are always reaching 


134 


The Woman Who Trusted 


out for new talent. When would you like to 
have our decision ? ” 

“At once if it would not inconvenience you,” 
replied Wilmot — “ that is, if you pay on accept- 
ance.” 

“ We generally do so,” replied Miss Under- 
hill, scanning Wilmot’ s manuscript, as if calculat- 
ing its length.” Usually we are too busy to make 
hurried examinations, but I will make an excep- 
tion in this case, and if you will wait half an hour, 
I can tell you if this is available, perhaps you 
would not mind looking over the files of the 
Fireside in the next room.” 

“I should be glad to do so,” answered 
Wilmot. 

Miss Underhill rang the call-bell on her desk, 
and the boy at the entrance came. 

“ Show Mr. — ” (She glanced at the last page 
of the manuscript) — “Mr. Wrenshall into the 
library and get down the files of the last three 
volumes.” 

Wilmot shuddered at hearing for the first 
time the name he had assumed, but he did not 
disown it, and simply bowed and followed the boy 
into the adjoining room. The boy laid the pond- 
erous tomes on a table, and left the room. Wil- 
mot opened one but the sight of the crude draw- 


The Woman Who Trusted 135 

ings, and the sensational double titles of the 
stories, sickened him. 

“If I am ever guilty of doing this sort of 
thing it shall only be as a means to an end, and 
no one shall couple my name with it,” he thought. 
“Charles Thornton Wrenshall sounds high 
enough. I hope she won’t suspect that it is 
assumed.” 

Miss Underhill was a rapid reader, and before 
twenty minutes had passed she had summoned 
him to her presence. Wilmot wondered if her 
promptness in reaching a decision augured suc- 
cess or failure. He decided that it might as well 
mean one as the other when he saw the serious 
expression of her face as he drew near to her 
desk. 

“You have done a remarkably fine piece of 
work, Mr. Wrenshall;” she said. “I like it very 
much indeed In fact, you have given me quite 
a treat, but what I am going to say may surprise 
you, and I hope you will never repeat it where it 
could reach the ears of the publishers for whom 
I work. I am going to be frank and tell you 
plainly that your story is simply too good — too 
high for the tastes of our readers. It is really 
such a story as one often sees in the Decade , the 
Columbian , Hamilton s and magazines of that 


136 The Woman Who Trusted 

rank. What we have to publish is work that is 
decidedly more sensational, and not so literary in 
workmanship.” 

Wilmot bowed, and tried to give his smile the 
appearance of naturalness. For a moment Mrs. 
McGowan’s rubicund face loomed before him. 

“You are very kind indeed,” he managed to 
say. “I did not, of course, know if it would suit.” 

“I have not the slightest doubt that you could 
do satisfactory work for us,” said Miss Underhill, 
folding his. manuscript and placing it into its en- 
velope — “ that is, if you studied our plans and 
needs, and really desired to please our clientele , 
but to be even more frank with you, I almost 
hope you will not try it, for I see you are capable 
of far better lines of work, and if one is really 
ambitious, this is more injurious than it seems at 
first.” 

“I think I understand you thoroughly,” said 
Wilmot, recalling what Ellerton had said of Miss 
Underhill, “I did not intend to stick to it very 
long. The truth is, it is a bread and butter case.” 

“ I understand, Mr. Wrenshall, but I still hope 
you won’t — may I say — soil your hands with it. 
Have you tried other things ? ” 

“Yes, in the way of editorial positions on 
papers, but so far I have not found an opening. 


The Woman Who Trusted 137 

May I ask if there are any vacancies in this 
house ? ” 

“ None at' present ; there is never anything 
but manuscript reading to do, and that would be 
even worse for your style than writing our 
stories.” 

As Wilmot descended the stairs, and emerged 
into the sunlight of the narrow street, which 
passed under one of the lowest arches of the 
approach to the great bridge, he was conscious of 
a deeper, more poignant despair than he had ever 
felt. The hum and stir of the city seemed to 
taunt him ; the busy appearance of every person 
he passed, accentuated this feeling. 

On his way towards Broadway, in passing 
through one of the streets which converged at 
the Five Points, he saw ahead of him a shop, in 
front of which hung three gilded balls. By the 
time he had reached the door, he had taken his 
gold watch from its chain. He hesitated a 
moment and then entered. 

A bald-headed man of about middle age stood 
behind a showcase, resting his fat fingers on a 
velvet mat. Wilmot handed him the watch. 

“ How much can I get on that for a month ? ” 
he asked. 


138 The Woman Who Trusted 

The pawnbroker looked at the outside of the 
watch, opened the case and examined the works 
under a magnifying glass fastened over his right 
eye. “Twenty-five dollars, ” he said, handing the 
watch back to its owner. 

“I accept your offer, ” said Wilmot, “but 
there is a photograph pasted inside the case. 
Let me remove it.” 

The broker opened the case and held the 
picture to the light. 

“ Oh I can get that out all right,” he said, 
applying the blade of his pen knife to the circular 
picture. “ Stop ! ” cried Wilmot fiercely, his eyes 
flashing. He was quivering all over. 

“Why, what is the matter?” asked the 
man in astonishment. “ I could have managed 
it easily.” “I can do it better,” said Wilmot. And 
when he had taken out the picture and was 
putting it into his notebook, he caught the 
expression of Muriel’s eyes and his heart sank. 
He hoped she would never know he had re- 
moved the picture she had herself put into his 
watch that sunny day when they had gone 
nutting together. Ah, how near he had come to 
asking her then to be his wife ! 

The pawnbroker had returned, and was hand- 
ing him some bills and a numbered ticket. 


CHAPTER XIX. 



ILMOT did not sleep well that night; 


* » thoughts about the uncertainty of his 
future kept him awake till almost day-break. He 
was roused from restless slumber by the post- 
man’s whistle, and got up and hastily dressed, for 
he knew it was eight o’clock, and he was looking 
for a letter from Muriel in regard to her coming 
to New York. On the table below, he found two 
letters addressed to him, but neither was in her 
handwriting. One was from his father, and to 
his surprise it bore the New York postmark. 
He tore it open. It was as follows : 

“ My dear son : I got here this afternoon, 
and am sick, and in great trouble at this hotel. 
This will reach you early in the morning. For 
the love of Mercy, come down and see me. 
Your affectionate father, Jasper Burian.” 

The young man’s blood seemed to stand still 
in his veins. His mother’s fears in regard to her 
husband had doubtless come true. Surely no- 
thing but an awful emergency could have driven 
Jasper Burian to such a humble, despondent 
appeal. Wilmot held the other letter unopened 
in his hand. He had no inclination to read it. 


i39 


140 The Woman Who Trusted 

It might be an invitation to a reception, to a tea, 
tickets to some “first night” or recital, he cared 
not. He thrushed it unopened into his pocket 
and hurried towards Broadway to take a car 
down town. 

King’s Hotel was near the Battery. Its loft- 
iest rooms looked over Castle Garden, and across 
the water to the Statue of Liberty, and out 
further seaward to where the horizon met the 
surface of the ocean. Wilmot entered the office 
and asked the clerk if Mr. Jasper Burian were 
staying there. The clerk looked at the register 
and nodded. Would the gentleman send up his 
name and take a seat ? 

Wilmot laid a card on the tray the office-boy 
held towards him, and sat down in the little 
reception-room. The time dragged slowly. 
Wilmot’ s impatience and fear grew as the minutes 
passed. Suddenly he remembered his other 
letter and opened it. To his astonishment, three 
five hundred dollar bills fell from it into his lap. 
The letter ran as follows : 

“ Mr. Wilmot Burian, 

“ Dear Sir : — 

“ I trust you will not be offended at 
the liberty I am taking. In a very indirect way, 
I have learned that you are a- deserving young 


The Woman Who Trusted 141 

man of great promise in the profession you have 
entered, and as I am led to believe you have only 
a limited income, and that you will put to a 
worthy use any money intrusted to you, I send 
you the enclosed bills. I shall not sign my name 
to this communicauon, so you need not try to 
return the money. That you may not feel 
hesitation in making use of it, I promise you that 
I will some day, when you are rich and famous, 
call on you and introduce myself. With best 
wishes for your prosperity, I am 

“An Unknown Admirer.” 

Noticing that the bell-boys were regarding 
him curiously, Wilmot hastily restored the money 
and letter to his pocket. Something in the 
wording, and the assumed handwriting reminded 
him of Mrs. Sennett. The next instant he was 
sure she had sent the money, for he recalled a 
conversation with her about the publication of a 
volume of certain short stories of his. He 
remembered telling her that a publisher had 
offered to bring out such an edition in exquisite 
style for twelve hundred dollars. 

“The gentleman wishes you to come up.” It 
was the boy who had taken his card, and he 
pointed at the elevator. 

At the door of a room on the top floor, 
Wilmot rapped. He had dismissed the thought 
of the money with the determination to return it 
to the sender that very day. 


142 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ Come in,” a voice called out from within. 

Jasper Burian was lying on the bed in his 
rumpled and soiled clothes ; his hat had fallen 
from a table and lay beside his dusty boots on the 
floor. The old man sat up on the side of the 
bed, held out his hand sheepishly, and muttered 
some unintelligible words intended for a greeting. 
His face was haggard, his one eye red and 
swollen, his hair uncombed ; he appeared ten 
years older than when Wilmot had last seen him. 

“What is the matter, father?” asked Wilmot. 

“ I have been sick ever since I left Norfolk,” 
said Jasper Burian. “I came by water. I wish 
it had killed me!” 

“ Father, I am very sorry to find you unwell.” 

“Wait till I tell you all,” blurted out the old 
man. “I am not much sick. Wilmot, I am in 
awful trouble, and if you can’t think of some way 
to help me out, our family name is gone. That’s 
all there is about it.” 

“Help you, father? In what way do you 
mean ?” 

The old man sat up and began to look about 
the room for his boots. Wilmot brought them to 
him. 

“Thank you, son.” That slip into innate po- 
liteness reminded Wilmot of his childhood, when 


The Woman Who Trusted 


*4 3 


he had often heard people say, Jasper Burian was 
a born gentleman. The old man made a quiver- 
ing attempt to draw on one of the boots, and fail- 
ing, threw himself back on the bed, and covered 
his face. 

Wilmot sat down on the side of the bed. An 
awful curiosity to know the worst, like some ma- 
terial thing had laid hold of his heart and was 
crushing it. Through the window he caught a 
glimpse of the ocean, the moving ships, the 
ferry-boats, the sunshine on the white-capped 
water ! How strange for the rest of the w T orld to 
be moving in an orderly manner while all within 
him was turmoil — despair ! When Jasper Burian 
next spoke, he did so without removing his hands 
from his face. 

“ My son,” he groaned, “ I am nothing but a 
common thief, and if something is not done to 
prevent exposure I shall kill myself! It shall 
never be said that I went to prison — a Burian 
never did.” 

Wilmot stared, speechless. Muriel Fair- 
child’s image had a way of rising before him in 
the midst of great difficulties. He now saw her 
by turns in every gown he had ever seen her 
wear. But the picture that prevailed over all 
others — that stood between him and the man on 


144 The Woman Who Trusted 

the bed, was her vision as she stood by his side 
on the veranda one day. They had been talking 
over the plot of a story he was planning. 

“No,” she had said, “I don’t think it will do 
to have her marry the son of a thief. It would 
be incongruous — inartistic. It would leave a bad 
taste in one’s mouth.” 

When Wilmot next spoke, it was with the 
vision still before him. 

“How can I help you, father?” he asked. “Is 
there anything I can do ?” 

“ Unless you can raise a good deal of money, 
you can’t,” answered the old man. “I am in an 
awful fix. I got to speculating, and it went 
against me. I tried to right myself by making a 
temporary use of some of the store funds, and 
pretending that certain unsettled bills for mer- 
chandise in New York were paid. They have 
been sending urgent letters about it, all of which 
I have prevented the President from seeing. I 
wrote to the New York merchants that I would 
be here to-day and settle. I am here but without 
a dollar to my name, and unless I make a big 
payment my arrest is certain. I thought there 
might be a ghost of a chance that some of your 
acquaintances up here might lend you some 
money, or go my security, or something !” 


The Woman Who Trusted 145 

“Father,” Wilmot’s voice faltered, ‘T had to 
pawn my watch last night for money to pay my 
room rent. I have' had a harder time than you 
may suspect ; you know the publishers who first 
took my book failed. That delays my progress, 
and—” 

A sudden groan from his father interrupted 
him. 

“You could not raise the money,” said he. “I 
might have known that. Writers never have a 
cent ahead. But I tell you I must have a thousand 
dollars or I’ll kill myself. I am ready for it ! I 
bought the stuff last night. I don’t suppose 
you’d try to stop me !” 

A great terror seized the heart of the young 

man. He tried to reflect calmly. Could Chester 
— Harrison — Mrs. Sennett? And with that he 
remembered the money she had anonymously 
sent him, and his heart began to beat wildly. 

“ Father!” he cried, “ I can borrow the money 
you need ; I have had that much loaned me — sent 
me for another purpose- — to help me on with my 
work, but if you will take it and settle the debt, 
and promise to help me refund it when you get 

able, I’ll let you have it.” 

Jasper Burian raised himself up, his one eye 
blearing incredulously. 


146 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“What?” he gasped. 

Wilmot repeated his words, now more delib- 
erately. 

Hope began to kindle a fire in the breast of 
the old man, and its light flashed faintly across 
his sallow face. He stood up, made a step for- 
ward, and laid a trembling hand on Wilmot’s 
shoulder. “ My boy—” he began, but he choked 
and began to cry. 

Wilmot loved him now as strongly as he had 
ever loved his mother, and that is saying much, it 
was only by a superhuman effort that he restrained 
his own tears. He drew from his pocket two of 
the five hundred dollar bills and laid them on the 
bed. 

“ Will a thousand dollars cover it, father ?” 

The old man nodded, in lieu of words, for he 
had choked again. He went awkwardly to the 
wash-stand, turned on the water and began to 
bathe his face. Wilmot knew he was trying to 
master his emotion, and said nothing. After a 
moment, which was passed in total silence, the 
ex-soldier turned and came forward, walking as 
erectly as his limp would permit. 

“I want you to forgive me for all I have ever 
said against you and your writing,” he said, keep 
ing his glance from the money on the bed. “If 


The Woman Who Trusted 


147 


you had not come to New York and made friends, 
you never could have saved me. My boy, as 
sure as I live, you shall not lose by this. I have 
had an awful lesson. I’ll settle with these people 
at once, and then — ” he drew himself up to his 
full height and raised a quivering hand aloft, “I 
swear by all that’s sacred to a Christian believer 
that never — never while breath is in this body, 
will I use any money but my own.” 


10 — Woman Who Trusted 


CHAPTER XX. 



‘HAT afternoon at four o’clock Wilmot called 


1 on Mrs. Sennett. He found her at the door, 
taking leave of Mrs. Langdon. 

“You have certainly ignored me completely,” 
said the latter, touching him playfully with her fan. 
“If you were never in this part of town one 
might overlook it, but you visit the Galatin so 
frequently that even the hall porter knows your 
step in the corridor.” 

“ Oh, I hope, for Mrs. Sennett’s sake, that it 
is not so bad as that,” retorted Wilmot. 

Mrs. Sennett made a wTy face as she closed 
the door after her departing caller. 

“You ought not to have said exactly that,” 
she laughed. 

“Why?” he questioned. 

“Because it was an open admission that you 
do come to see me. Dorothea was only pump- 
ing you. She cannot forgive anyone for liking 
me, and then you have not been to see her once 
since the day I met you there, have you ?” 

“ I am sorry to say I have not.” 

“She’ll never forgive it.” 

They had stopped at the low brass table 


The Woman Who Trusted 


149 


which held her tea-service. He took a letter from 
his pocket, and seeing it, her eyes went down. 
She began to fumble with the cups and saucers. 

“ Have you had tea ?” she asked. 

“No, but I have something to say to you.” 

She began to draw the table towards the 
lounge where he usually sat. 

“ Why don’t you offer to do this for me ?” 

“Pardon me, I forgot,” he laid the anonymous 
letter down, and lifted the table to the desired 
spot.” 

“I wonder if I have used all that Ceylon tea 
you fancied so much. Let me see if the cream 
has come.” 

She rang. 

“You are not acting well to-day,” he laughed, 
when the girl had received the order and gone out. 

“ Not behaving properly, you mean ?” 

“ You are a poor actress,” he said ; “ because 
no woman would fail to have the curiosity to want 
to know the contents of a letter which was put be- 
fore her eyes, and which she had never seen 
before.” 

He liked her the better for the genuine flush 
of displeasure that spread over her face. 

“Is — is this the letter?” she stammered, “the 
letter you think I .ought to be curious about?” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


150 

“Not at all, for you know all about it. You 
sent it to me.” 

“Well, I shall not deny it, seeing that you 
are not angry with me,” she said. “ But do you 
know, I was afraid you’d be silly and not let me 
do anything for you.” 

He opened the letter, took out the remaining 
five hundred dollar bill, and laid it before her on 
the table. 

“ I have been compelled to accept the loan of 
part of it — of a thousand dollars. I never 
dreamt of keeping any of it, but this morning I 
met a dear friend of mine — a relative in fact — 
who was in great distress. The money saved him 
from absolute ruin. I shall always be grateful to 
you for that ; but I never could have accepted 
any of it for my own use. I hope you will believe 
that.” 

An expression of vexation crossed her face. 

“Then you will not arrange about the publi- 
cation of the short stories ?” 

“You did not thoroughly understand me that 
day,” he explained. “I did not say that I would 
pay for such an edition, even if I had been able. 
I only mentioned that I had had the offer. I shall 
never bring out any book till there is sufficient 
merit in my work to make a good publisher under- 
take it wholly at his own risk.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 151 

“ And I thought I was going to help you ; it 
really breaks my heart to find you so obstinate.” 

The maid came in with a tray, and after she 
had gone Mrs. Sennett proceeded in silence to 
prepare the tea. 

“I almost feel that you are angry,” he ven- 
tured to say after a moment. He felt very grate- 
ful towards her. Surely he was fortunate in hav- 
ing such a friend. 

“I feel only disappointment,” Mrs. Sennett 
replied. “ I have more money than I have any use 
for, and if I can not help really deserving, prom- 
ising people who are my friends, what is the use 
of trying to do good with one’s money ? And I’d 
rather help you than any one in the w r orld.” 

To his surprise he saw tears in her eyes, and 
that touched him profoundly. 

“ You do not seem to realize how deeply I am 
in your debt already,” he said, bending towards 
her. “Nothing on earth could have made me 
accept the loan of that thousand dollars except 
an emergency you could never dream of. Mrs. 
Sennett, I don’t mind confiding in you. Your 
loan has saved my family name from everlasting 
disgrace. Just after opening your letter this 
morning I found my father on the verge of suicide 
because he had used certain funds of the people 


152 


The Woman Who Trusted 


by whom he was employed. Your money saved 
him, and I feel sure that he will never go wrong 
again.” 

Mrs. Sennett looked at him with glistening 
eyes. 

“ My poor boy! can this be true? Then — 
then the money did do you good after all.” 

“I’d rather use it as I did,” answered Wilmot 
“ than to have published a hundred books. I owe 
you far more than I can ever repay.” 

“The truth is, I am unhappy about something 
else,” continued Mrs. Sennett. “ Mrs. Langdon 
told me just now that people were making 
remarks about your visiting me so often, and — 
and when it occurred to me that perhaps I ought 
to stop it, for your sake, it almost broke my 
heart — it opened my eyes to a stern fact.” 

“And that is?” he asked, wonderingly. 

“That I have become foolish about you — that 
you have become more essential to my happiness 
than I thought possible. I don’t believe I could 
ever be happy again if— if you stopped coming.” 

His heart bounded, and then it sank like a 
plummet. Her meaning was too obvious to be 
misunderstood. For a moment there seemed to 
him nothing unnatural in what she had so broadly 
hinted at, and in that moment of tense emotion, 


The Woman Who Trusted 153 

her suggestion only seemed to add to his vast 
consciousness of gratitude towards her. 

“You feel that way, really ?” he said. 

Her face lighted up. Her eyes appeared to 
smile through her tears. Something in her face 
drew her to him. It all seemed a dream — or one 
of his most fanciful creations of the imagination. 

“ I should be the happiest woman in all the 
world to be able to help you materially, and — and 
if we have to part I really believe I shall never 
know another contented day. Oh, Wilmot, can 
you understand ?” 

The pathos of her tone, like an impalpable 
billow, suddenly overwhelmed him — completely 
wrecked his faculty for calm calculation and de- 
liberation. He was conscious only of his grati- 
tude, his faith in her, and her great friendship. 

“Then we will get married/’ he said. “I 
shall devote my life — ” 

There was a rap on the folding-door, and Mrs. 
Langdon burst into the room. 

“Pardon me,” she said, coldly. “ I don’t mean 
to intrude on you turtle doves, but I forgot my 
note-book. I need it. It contains important 
notes for a write-up. I went all the way to the 
Twenty-third Street Elevated Station before I 
missed it. I am all out of breath. I’m sorry I 
disturbed you.” 


154 


The Woman Who Trusted 


She secured her property from the depths of 
an easy chair. 

Mrs. Sennett rose with great dignity. There 
could be no mistaking the sneer of the newspaper 
woman, nor the meaning in the term she had 
used. 

“ I really don’t think you are quite polite, 
Mrs. Langdon,” said Mrs. Sennett, coldly. 

“I am sorry I intruded,” said Mrs. Langdon 
ironically. “ If I had reflected that you would 
not like to be disturbed, I — but it doesn’t matter. 
I was in a great hurry, and didn’t think.” 

“ You are really too personal,” said Mrs. 
Sennett. “I have heard a great many things you 
have said about my receiving Mr. Burian and it is 
time for you to stop. Mr. Burian has just asked 
me to be his wife.” 

“Indeed! You really can’t be in earnest,” 
Mrs. Langdon paused for an instant in bewilder- 
ment then she burst into a laugh, and laughed 
till the tears came into her eyes. 

“ We are in earnest,” Mrs. Sennett assured 
her, “are we not Mr. Burian?” 

Wilmot nodded. “We are,” he said. 

Mrs. Langdon ceased laughing for a moment 
and stared first at him and then at Mrs. Sennett. 

“Mrs. Sennett,” she began, subduing her 


The Woman Who Trusted 155 

laugh to a little amused cackle. “I sincerely 
congratulate you. I shall never tease you again. 
Henceforth I shall have only the most profound 
respect for your ability. You are a smarter 
woman than your friends think you. You are 
smarter than you really look. I congratulate you 
with all my heart.” 

With that she flounced through the portieres 
and disappeared. Wilmot heard her laugh again 
as she passed through the next room, and that 
echo of her ridicule brought to him a sudden re- 
vulsion of feeling. What had he done? 

“ She is an envious old thing,” declared Mrs. 
Sennett, sitting down by him and bending towards 
him with an air of sudden concern. The truth 
is, she took a fancy to you from the start and had 
quite set her heart on having you hang on to her 
as other young men have done. When you 
didn’t visit her, she told me it was because you 
were too greatly absorbed with your work, but 
when she heard of your frequent visits to me, 
she began to make fun of me. You don’t like 
her, do you dear ?” 

“I don’t know her well,” he answered, won- 
dering what it was that had suddenly crushed all 
hope out of him. 

Mrs. Sennett pushed the tea-table from her. 
She was plainly nervous. 


156 The Woman Who Trusted 

“ I dread only one thing,” she said, ‘‘and that 
is her keen ridicule. I know her well enough to 
expect a whole tirade of gossip in announcing 
our engagement. She will be sure to put a lot 
of stuff in her paper to-morrow.” 

“To-morrow!” echoed Wilmot, with sinking 
heart, and now the image of Muriel Fairchild 
suddenly rose before him. The vision repre- 
sented her as reading the notice in the Advance 
among her flowers on the lawn. Her face was 
white as death. Her father came in at the gate 
and spoke to her, but she only pointed to the 
article, dropped the paper, and turned into the 
house. 

“Yes,” resumed Mrs. Sennett, “I actually 
dread the next issue of her paper. I almost wish 
I had not shown my temper just now. She is a 
dangerous woman.” 

Half an hour later Wilmot took his leave. 
With a promise to call again soon, he hastened 
homeward. 

“ My God !” he said to himself, “ what have I 
done ?” And then the first tendency towards 
cowardice that had ever shown itself in his char- 
acter came to him with the hope that, after all, 
there might yet be time to save himself and 
Muriel. He felt the thrill of her parting kiss. 


The Woman Who Trusted 157 

He was a fool, an idiot ; he had been untrue 
to the only one he loved more than he loved 
himself. He stopped on the sidewalk. He 
would go back and tell Mrs. Sennett to think it 
over, to consider nothing settled till — but Mrs. 
Langdon ! There was no doubt that she had 
already written half of her announcement. It 
was too late ! To retreat now would only com- 
promise his friend and benefactress. Yes, Muriel 
Fairchild was lost to him. There remained noth- 
ing now to do except to cause the blow to fall as 
lightly on her as possible. The whole world 
would say he had sold himself. 


CHAPTER XXI. 


HESTER stood at the door of Frank Har- 



rison’s room taking leave in an animated 
way. Wilmot nodded and was passing on to his 
apartment when Chester turned and called after 


him: 


“ Hello, I say, old man, where are you rush- 
ing so blindly ?” 

But Wilmot made no reply, and did not pause 
till he had entered his own room. He was about 
to close the door when he saw that Chester was 
following him. 

“ Let me in. I have a great deal to tell you,” 
Chester said, eagerly. “Good news for you, too, 
I hope.” 

“Good news for me!” cried Wilmot, with a 
start. “ Then she is here — Muriel — Miss Fair- 


child!” 


“No, it’s not so good as that ; in fact you may 
kick me for taking a big liberty with you. You 
remember you told me the Decade had returned 
your story ?” 


Yes.” 


“ Well, I was talking to Harrison about it this 
morning, and he said he believed he could get 


158 


The Woman Who Trusted 


159 


the editor of the Columbian interested in it. I 
came here to see you and found you out, but saw 
the story on the table. I knew it was meddling, 
but I took it to Harrison and he showed it to the 
Columbian staff. They liked it immensely and 
have accepted it. Here is their check for a hun 
dred and fifty.” 

Wilmot took the check. At any other time 
it would have set his pulse beating like a trip- 
hammer, but now he was scarcely conscious of 
the slightest gratification. However, he could 
not have failed to show appreciation for the kind- 
ness of his friends, had his troubles been even 
greater. 

“I can think of nothing I should like more,” 
he said. “I am greatly indebted to you. It was 
very kind of you both. You may go through 
my manuscripts whenever you like if you will 
treat them this way.” 

“I told Harrison I didn’t see how you could 
object, really,” said Chester, “and I am glad that 
is off my mind. The other news concerns myself.” 

“Yourself?” repeated Wilmot absently. He 
began to fumble among the articles on the man- 
tlepiece for a match to light the gas, but gave it 
up and sat down on the side of his bed. The 
occurrence at the Galatin had crushed him com- 


160 The Woman Who Trusted 

pletely — so completely that he felt absolutely 
weak. He loathed himself. 

“Oh, Burian, old man,” cried Chester. “I 
am the happiest human being ever born, A 
horrible world of my own creation has split wide 
open. My horizon has expanded and expanded 
till I see nothing but scintilating, palpitating 
ecstacy. I have been wildly in love with Aline 
ever since she came and lit up this old house and 
filled it with the perfume and song of heaven. 
But I have suffered tortures. I am, you know, 
twenty years older than she, and I brooded over 
that fact till marrying her seemed a crime. I was 
afraid it would be unfair for a man whose life is 
half spent to ask so young a girl to share the tail 
end of it with him. I thought she’d better take 
Harrison, and told myself that I’d never let her 
know the truth, but she found it out, and not an 
hour ago confessed she loved me, and that her 
father, dear old Weyland, had no objections to me 
as a son-in-law. 

We are going to get married very soon, in an 
informal way in the studio. You are to be best 
man. It must be hasty. Brown, Wilkins & Co., 
of Boston, have offered me an editorial position at 
a living salary, and if I accept their offer, I must 
go over in a few days. Aline says she is willing 


The Woman Who Trusted 161 

to forego a church wedding in order that we may 
not be parted. Weyland thinks it’s best, under 
the circumstances. The dear fellow is really 
pleased, and — just think of it ! — I have lain awake 
hundreds of nights thinking of his contempt 
when he found out that I dared to love his 
daughter. And now he is actually taking an in- 
terest in the arrangements.” 

“I congratulate you with all my heart,” said 
Wilmot. “ I confess I suspected you were in 
love, and I thought you were worried about 
something.” 

“This makes me want all of my friends to get 
married,” laughed Chester. “You in particular, 
Burian. Pardon me, but I have long believed 
that you were in love with that little Southern 
girl. By Jove, you could not keep from loving 
her. She is the one woman in the world for you. 
She is as true as steel to those she likes. She 
has the highest ideals, and an ambition to be all 
that a noble woman can be, and above all, she 
loves you with all — ” 

“Stop, for God’s sake, stop !” Wilmot sprang 
to his feet, and, pale as death, and quivering from 
head to foot, he stood in the faint light that came 
in at the window. 

Chester looked at him in astonishment. 


i 62 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“What on earth is the matter ?” he asked. 
“Are you ill ?” 

Wilmot sank back on his bed and was silent 
for a moment. 

“What is the matter, old man ?” repeated 
Chester, in growing alarm. 

“I have something to confide to you,” replied 
Wilmot, making an effort to speak calmly. “You 
must never again connect my name with that of — 
of Miss Fairchild. I am engaged to be married 
to Mrs. Sennett.” 

Chester started. For a moment he said 
nothing, and Wilmot could feel his eyes piercing 
him through the half darkness. 

“ I can not— simply will not, believe it,” Ches- 
ter said slowly and distinctly. “You have toe 
much common sense to be another Printup.” 

“ Another Printup ?” repeated Wilmot. “ I 
do not understand.” 

“Chester advanced a step and laid his hand 
on Wilmot’ s shoulder. 

“Is it possible that you have never heard how 
the papers made sport of her two years ago for 
inducing that boy, Printup, nineteen years of age, 
to engage himself to her?” 

“I know nothing of it. I — I can’t believe it,” 
stammered Wilmot. 


The Woman Who Trusted 163 

“ All you have to do then to convince your- 
self is to look over the files of the New York 
papers in the Astor Library during the month of 
April, two years ago. The Printups belong to 
the four hundred. They managed to stop the 
affair, after the couple had made three attempts 
to get someone to marry them, and they sent the 
boy to France. It was said that she had appealed 
to his boyish gratitude by advancing money to 
him when he was in a tight place. Burian, for 
God’s sake, take the advice of a man who loves 
you like a brother, and don’t let this go farther. 
She really is an attractive, magnetic sort of 
woman; she is good-hearted, and is no fool about 
some things, but she is awfully weak on the subject 
of loving men younger than herself! Break it 
up, my friend, or it will ruin you — absolutely end 
your career! You might as well never have 
been born as to take that step.” 

Wilmot covered his face with his hands. 

“It is too late,” he said, “the engagement 
was announced in the presence of Mrs. Langdon, 
and Mrs. Sennett says she will publish it in the 
morning.” 

“ And you admitted it before Mrs. Langdon?” 

“Yes, I admitted it,” said Wilmot, rising and 
beginning to walk to and fro. “And you must 

II — Woman Who Trusted 


The Woman Who Trusted 


164 

not say anything against her, Chester. She has 
been a good friend to me. I have gone into it, 
and I’ll stand to my word — if — if — no matter what 
comes ! ” 

“ Bosh ! getting that manuscript for you was 
nothing. Are you going to ruin your whole life 
because of a trifle like that? ” 

“ I was not thinking of that, alone. I say, 
Chester, for God’s sake, leave me now. I want 
to lie down and rest,” and Wilmot threw himself 
back on the bed. 

“All right, old man,” said Chester slowly. 
“But I have nothing to take back. I would talk 
against it for a week if it would do a particle of 
good. For your own sake — for the sake of that 
sweet girl in the South stop it. Stop it, even if 
you are dishonored in the eyes of half the world!” 

Chester’s ringing footsteps died out in the 
corridor. Wilmot rose and began again to 
search for a match; the darkness maddened him; 
it seemed to close upon him, and press down on 
him like a vast, impalpable weight. When he 
had lighted the flaring gas, and saw his reflection 
in a mirror, he stared at it as if it were a specter. 
He had never looked so haggard. Something 
seemed to hold his eyes wide open, as if the 
muscles of his face had been shortened. There 


The Woman Who Trusted 


165 


was a glare in his eyes, which he tried to drive- 
out ; but it owed its being to remorse, and re- 
mained. 

With a monosyllabic prayer he turned from 
the glass to the photograph of Muriel Fairchild 
on a little easel on the mantlepiece. He rested 
liis hands on the edge of the mantlepiece, and as 
he gazed at the fair, beautiful face, the wild glare in 
his eyes softened into a beam of tender despair. 
How he loved her! And he had never fully real- 
ized it till now, when she was lost to him forever. 
She would weep for him as for a friend that had 
died. Tears sprang into his eyes at the thought. 
He felt a choking sensation in his throat. He 
called himself a coward — her murderer. He 
told himself that he was too despicable to live. 
Then he heard someone coming along the cor- 
ridor from the direction of Chester’s room, and 
springing to the door, he grasped the handle, and 
firmly turned the key. Chester should not face 
him again with his galling advice ! What had been 
done was irrevocable. The steps were now very 
near, and Wilmot would not release the handle of 
the door lest it rattle, and betray his presence at 
it: so he held it firri , and waited. Chester 
would rap, and getting^no answer, would perhaps 


move on. 


1 66 The Woman Who Trusted 

The rap came, a gentle considerate one. 
Wilmot held his breath, clutched the door-handle, 
and waited. Another rap, and it was louder; still 
he kept silent. Then Chester caught the door- 
handle and shook it violently. 

“Burian,” he called out sharply, “I say old 
man, are you there ?” 

Wilmot made no response. 

“ Burian ! I say Burian!” Chester's voice was 
keyed high. 

“ What is the matter ?” It was now Frank 
Harrison, who was speaking, and Wilmot heard 
his approaching steps. 

“I really don’t know.” There was no mis- 
taking the note of alarm in Chester’s voice. “I 
— I am afraid something has happened to Burian. 
I saw him just now, and — great God ; if—” 

Chester shook the door again, and threw his 
weight against it. Then Wilmot turned the key, 
and the door opened. Chester almost fell into 
the room. 

“What is the matter?” asked Wilmot. 

“I beg pardon,” gasped Chester ; “I thought 
— I was afraid — by Jove! you gave me a devilish 
fright !” Chester looked at Frank Harrison, 
who stood staring in the corridor, and affected a 
laugh. “I left my match case in your room just 


The Woman Who Trusted 


167 


now,” he said; “and when I rapped and you 
made no sign, I thought — I was afraid * you had 
fainted, you looked so ill just now.” 

“I am all right,” replied Wilmot, who under- 
stood what his friend had feared. “I am only a 
little tired. Won’t you both come in?” 

“No, thanks,” replied Harrison. “I am 
dressing for the theatre, and am behind time. I 
have a first-night ticket to see Mansfield in a new 
play.” 

Chester went into the room and secured his 
match-box. 

“ Think I feel like feeding,” he said as he went 
out. “Won’t you come along?” 

“No, thank you,” answered Wilmot. “I 
think I’ll lie down and rest.” 

But before he went to sleep that night he took 
Muriel’s photograph from the mantlepiece and 
laid it in a drawer under some papers. He could 
not bear the gentle stare of her condemning eyes, 
hie had blindly, stupidly forsaken her. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


J\ /! EET Madame Angier and me in Jersey City 
* * * at six forty this evening. 

“Muriel.” 

That was the telegram Mrs. McGowan handed 
Wilmot the next morning as he and Chester were 
going down to breakfast together. 

“What is it?” asked Chester, as they went 
along the street. 

“Miss Fairchild is coming to New York to- 
night,” replied Wilmot. 

“Ah!” and Chester fixed Wilmot’s face with 
a sudden, sharp look. “ I am glad she is coming/' 

“ She wants me to meet her and Madame 
Angier at the station in Jersey City.” 

“And you are going?” 

“Yes, of course.” 

They entered the cafe, and took seats at a little 
window on the side of the room. Chester gave 
the waiter a coin and ordered a copy of the 
Morning Advancers eyes meeting Wilmot’s as he 
did so. The glances thus exchanged were gloom- 
ily significant. When the paper came Chester 
opened it before his eyes. Wilmot ordered his 
breakfast and began to stir his coffee and cream 

1 68 


The Woman Who Trusted 169 

which the waiter had already brought. He could 
not keep his eyes from Chester s profile. 

Presently Chester grunted angrily, and struck 
the table with his hand. 

“It is all here/’ he said, without looking up. 
“ That woman is a she devil ! I can read rankling 
spite in every damnable line she has written.” 

Wilmot reached out for the paper, but Chester 
crushed it into his lap. 

“ I wouldn’t read it if I were you,” he said. 
“It is the most cowardly piece of work I ever 
saw. She is a disgrace to the profession. If a 
man had done it I’d thrash the life out of him, 
but you can’t take any notice of it. You must 
simply grin and bear it.” 

Wilmot’s hand lay extended on the table. It 
seemed to have stiffened till it looked like a 
plaster cast. A newsboy crossed the sidewalk 
and was holding up his papers, soliciting him to 
buy through the open window. But Wilmot 
turned to Chester. 

“ I may as well see what she says, and be 
done with it,” he said, in the tone of a man 
condemned to death. 

Chester gave him the paper, and took up the 
menu. 

“ Dorothea has evidently taken a dislike to 
you,” he said. 


170 The Woman Who Trusted 

Wilmot’s face was hidden behind the open 
paper. When he folded it, and laid it down a 
few moments later, his face was white, set and 
distorted. After that colloquy, the two friends 
did not speak till their breakfast was finished. 
Chester seemed to have decided not to refer 
again to the painful topic. 

As they were parting on the street corner, 
however, he said, holding out his hand: — 

‘*1 hardly feel that I have the right to my own 
happiness while you are feeling as you do.” 

“Don’t think about me, Louis,” said Wiimot. 
“I shall go back and try to get to work on some- 
thing. The check you and Harrison brought me 
has stimulated me to make further effort.” 

That afternoon as Wiimot was walking down 
Broadway, on his way to meet Muriel and was 
looking for a car to one of the Jersey City ferries 
he met Richard Soul as he was coming out of a 
little book shop, accompanied by a young lady 
who resembled the manager closely enough to be 
his daughter. Wiimot was quite sure that Mr. 
Soul looked directly at him, and yet the manager 
made no sign of recognition, but took the girl’s 
arm, and drew her onward. The next minute 
Wiimot had no doubts about the matter, for the 
girl turned and cast a curious glance over her 


The Woman Who Trusted 171 

shoulder after him. It seemed as if the manager 
had told her who he was. 

Wilmot knew that he had been cut. Soul 
had read Mrs. Langdon’s article, and had refused 
to speak to him. The long street seemed to rise 
and fall; Wilmot moved onward as through a 
haze, jostled by the hurrying passers-by. To him 
his condition seemed infinitely pathetic. He 
had acted with unpardonable haste, but he had 
done no intentional wrong. 

He ground his teeth together and clenched 
his hands. A Burian, it was true, would not go 
to prison, nor to the unblessed grave of a suicide, 
but a Burian, who had dreamt of writing the 
name higher on the cliffs of honor than it had 
ever been written, had become the butt of public 
ridicule. His name was being connected with 
that of a silly boy of nineteen — a fool! And 
coupled with that was the stinging — secret — 
fact that a Burian had blighted the life of a 
bright young girl. 

A car with a green stripe flashed through the 
blur before his eyes and the letters, “TWENTY- 
THIRD STREET FERRY,” reminded him of 
his duty. But after all, he reflected. Would it 
now be wise for him to meet Muriel? Had he 
really the social right to act as the escort of a 


172 The Woman Who Trusted 

young woman who had always been punctilious in 
regard to the standing of her acquaintances? 

The thought like some material thing seemed 
to strike him between the eyes. He had crossed 
the street to catch the car, but fell back and 
allowed it to pass on. He told himself that he 
must think the matter over, and not act inju- 
diciously in an affair of such grave moment. But 
he could not think. The effort to decide between 
right and wrong in the present instance set his 
brain whirling. 

The final result of his deliberation was the de- 
cision that he would, on the boat coming over, 
apprise Muriel and her chaperon of what had 
happened. Then if they objected to his company 
he would see that they secured a reliable cab on 
the New York side, and leave them. 

Behind the iron railing which separates the 
waiting-room of the big station in Jersey City 
from the numerous in-coming and out-going trains 
Wilmot waited. One of the guards had directed 
him to the track of the Limited Express from the 
South, and on it his dull gaze rested. There was 
a far-off rumble, as of an earthquake, then the 
flare of a headlight loomed up from the dusk 
beyond the long train-shed. 

“She is coming !” said his soul. “She is 


The Woman Who Trusted 173 

coming — coming, with a heart full of trust and 
tenderness, yet I — Oh, My God ! ” 

The locomotive stood noisily exhausting 
steam within a few feet of him. He pressed his 
face between the bars of the fence, and strained 
his eyes to see the well-remembered form among 
the stream of passengers who were alighting 
from the long line of cars, and rushing pell-mell 
through the gates. Wilmot tried to pass inside, 
but a guard held him back. 

4 ‘You must not go in there !” said he 
gruffly. 

Wilmot ascended the steps leading to the 
waiting-room, that he might look over the heads 
of the crowd. He was afraid Muriel might pass 
him unnoticed in the human torrent. 

“Ah, here he is ! ” It was her voice, ringing 
with a glad tone of relief. She stood before him, 
dropped her parcels, and held out both her hands. 

“I expected you to be down where the train 
stopped,” she said, as gladly as a happy child ; 
“ and when I did not see you I was afraid some- 
thing had detained you, but I forget ; you do not 
know Madame Angier.” 

“Iam very glad to meet you,” said that lady 
who looked as if she had not caught his name. 

Wilmot relieved them of their hand-bags and 


174 The Woman Who Trusted 

parcels, and began to pilot them towards the 
ferry. 

“Have you had a pleasant trip ?” he managed 
to ask. 

“ Rather,” answered Madame Angier ; “except 
for the dust. It has not rained for a long time.” 

They had reached the ferry-boat and taken 
seats, when Muriel, who had been silently and 
studiously regarding Wilmot during his conversa- 
tion with Madame Angier, inquired : 

“You do not look very well, Wilmot, have 
you been ill ?” 

“No, I think I am all right,” he returned awk- 
wardly. 

There was a pause for a moment. A troubled, 
unsatisfied expression had settled on Muriel’s 
face: the joyous note in her voice had died out. 

“We are going to the Galatin,” explained 
Madame Angier. “A letter from the proprietor, 
who is a friend of mine, made me decide on it 
just before I left Atlanta. He has offered us de- 
lightful rooms there. He seems desirous of hav- 
ing me hold some of my recitals in the music- 
room. I hope you won’t think I quite approve 
of the house. There are several objectionable 
people there, who, but for their wealth and influ- 
ence, would have been turned out long ago. I 


The Woman Who Trusted 175 

have always been particular about my environ- 
ment and when I have a charge like this (she 
glanced at Muriel lovingly), “I am even more 
careful. I see from this morning’s Advance , 
which I read on the train, that one of the inmates 
of the house, Mrs. Sennett, is making herself 
ridiculous again by becoming engaged to another 
young man. I did not show the article to you, 
dear,” turning to Muriel. “I want to keep such 
things from you as much as possible. You won’t 
have to meet her.” 

“Why, that is the name of your friend, Wil- 
mot,” said Muriel, wonderingly. 

“Do you know her?” asked Madame Angier. 
“ Do you know Mrs. Albert Sennett?” 

Wilmot nodded. His head rocked mechanic- 
ally, and came to a stop only in obedience to the 
law of gravitation. The dull, shuddering thump 
of the machinery in the hold of the boat seemed 
in some subtle way to connect itself with his vital 
organism. That he must then and there explain 
was clearly unavoidable. His muscles tightened 
as he looked at Muriel. He was about to thrust 
a rusty blade into the heart of the timid creature 
that he loved beyond all else in the world. 

“I feel,” he began, “ that I have a — a disagree- 
able duty to perform before offering myself as 


176 


The Woman Who Trusted 


your escort. I am the young man referred to in 
the article you mention. ,, 

“ You !” exclaimed Madame Angier,“ surely — ” 

Something again set his head rocking. 

“We became engaged yesterday afternoon.” 
He avoided the hardening stare that shot from 
Muriel’s eyes. He saw Madame Angier suddenly 
sit erect, and heard her utter a low, unintelligible 
exclamation. Muriel’s purse rolled from her lap 
to the floor. He stooped and restored it. Her 
lips moved as they would have moved had the 
words “thank you ” come from them. From her 
deep, long-lashed eyes a startled, terrified ques- 
tion was springing. He quailed before her stare 
like an insect beneath focused sun rays. The 
boat began to bump against the pier on the New 
York side. He took up their bags and parcels. 

“I shall see that you get a reliable cab,” he 
said significantly to Madame Angier. 

“ It would make no difference to me — myself,” 
stammered that lady, flushing deeply, but you 
know the world well enough to understand — -oh ! 
I hate unpleasant situations. I do hope you com- 
prehend, Mr. — Mr. — ” 

“You are entirely right/’ he assured her, as 
the crowd pressed them towards the gates at the 
end of the boat. “It will be best.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


177 


Muriel had not heard the foregoing dialogue, 
having gleaned only what he said about the cab. 
She was conscious, however, that something as aw* 
ful as death itself had befallen the man she loved. 
What an ending to a day more full of bright an- 
ticipation than any her life had ever brought forth ! 

He hailed a cab, and when he had seen them 
safely inside, and had given the driver explicit 
instructions as to their destination, he stood with 
his head uncovered in an attitude of utter dejec- 
tion. Madame Angier, without offering him her 
hand, coldly thanked him for the service he had 
rendered them. Muriel shook hands with him, 
that dumb, helpless inquiry still in her eyes. He 
signaled to the driver and the cab rolled away. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


HAT night Wilmot slept the deep dreamless 



* sleep of a beast driven to exhaustion, and 
yet when he awaked the next morning he was 
unrefreshed. 

As he lay with his gaze on the ceiling, he 
heard Chester merrily whistling in his room, and 
the thought came to him that it was remarkable 
that he and Chester had so quickly changed 
places. Only a few days ago the latter had been 
deeply troubled, and now — what a gleeful whistle! 
It was as if Chester had become a boy again. 
After all, manhood was such a grim sordid thing ! 
Wilmot shuddered. He was to succeed Mr. 
Albert W. Sennett, who had died in ripe old age. 
Wilmot’s boyhood had seemed to remain with 
him faithfully up to now, but it had suddenly 
deserted him. He felt old, and old in wrong 
doing. 

He hoped Chester would not stop with his 
cheerful face as he went out to breakfast. There 
seemed more ease in yielding to morbid brooding 
than in fighting it, and Chesters whistle was so 
incongruous, so irritating. 

It was louder now, for Chester had opened 

178 


The Woman Who Trusted 


179 


his door, and was coming out. Then the whistle 
ceased, and Wilmot knew that his friend was 
stepping lightly to avoid disturbing him. He 
heard him descend the stairs, and then, after a 
few minutes, Chester returned. His footsteps 
slowed up and stopped. There was a rustling of 
paper and a letter was cautiously pushed under 
the door. 

As Chester stole away, Wilmot picked it up. 
It was from Muriel. It had been posted at 9 
o’clock the previous night. 

“Dear Wilmot:” she wrote. “I feel that I 
must make an explanation. It was not till we 
were driving on to the Galatin last evening that I 
learned why you did not accompany us all the 
way. If I had dreamt that Madame was sug- 
gesting such a thing to you — my oldest and best 
friend — I should have opposed it indignantly. 
For the world, I would not have you feel that I 
could be ashamed to be seen in your company 
under any circumstances. Do come to see me at 
once, and allow me to explain. I feel so home- 
sick up here among strangers. Let me be your 
friend as of old! Do let me, even if what I heard 
you say is true. Your action must have been 
right else you — in whom I have so much faith — 
would not have done it. Muriel. ” 

Wilmot sat with the letter in his hand for a 
long time before deciding how to answer it. 
Finally he wrote as follows : 

12 — Woman Who Trtisted. 


180 The Woman Who Trusted 

“My dear little friend: 

“ In such an important matter as this I can not 
allow you to act on the generous impulses of 
your great big heart. Madame Angier was 
right ; you ought not to be seen with me now. 
The lady who is to be my wife evidently has 
enemies, and they are not now favorably dis- 
posed towards me. It would kill me to be the 
means of drawing you into notice in connection 
with a name so notorious as mine has become. 
For your own sake don’t even say up here that 
you know me, but think as well of me as you can. 
What I have done seemed to me to be right. 

“ Faithfully your friend, 

“ Wilmot Burian.” 

The note did not express what he wanted to 
say, but he had put it beyond his power to write 
what was really in his heart. He sent it by a 
messenger. 

That afternoon about three o’clock, as he was 
endeavoring to work on a short story, the plot of 
which had once held great attraction for him, 
but which now seemed unmanageable, a servant 
brought up Muriel’s card, with the information 
that she was waiting in the parlor below. 

She was sitting on the sofa at the window 
which opened on the court where there was 
a little plot of grass, a diminutive fountain, and a 
few pots of Mrs. McGowan’s half-famished flowers. 


The Woman Who Trusted 181 

“You ought not to have come,” he said 
gently, as he took her hands and pressed them 
excitedly. 

The next instant he saw the mistake into 
which his tender impulse had led him. She drew 
herself up and gave him her frank eyes steadily. 

“ I would not have you misunderstand me, 
Wilmot,” she said proudly. “ You know me well 
enough to know that I am not here to plead for 
myself. What has — ” her voice quivered against 
her will — “passed between us is over, and, of 
course, must be forgotten by us, but — ” 

“ Oh, Muriel, don’t !” was all he could say. 

“ As for my calling here,” she went on firmly, 
“ Mr. Chester was with me when your message 
came. I told him I desired to see you, and he 
said there would be no harm in my coming — that 
the parlor belonged to the landlady, and that 
ladies often come here. I felt it my duty to see 
you, Wilmot. I should feel the same way if it 
were my brother or any dear friend who was 
going to do a rash, thoughtless thing, which 
would imperil all his future. I saw her last night 
in the dining-room. A woman can read a woman, 
Wilmot, and, you see, I know you, too. I under- 
stand your nature. Pardon me, but I could swear 
you do not love her. I was forced to search for 


182 


The Woman Who Trusted 


the cause of your step. Of course, you felt grate- 
ful to her for her rescuing your novel, but that 
was not all, Wilmot.” 

'‘Not all?” he repeated with a start. 

“No, it was not all, Wilmot. You know your 
father and I have always been good friends.” 

He nodded, wondering what could be coming. 

“When he returned from New York the 
other day,” went on Muriel, “he met me on the 
street, and walked home with me. He could talk 
of nothing but you — your nobleness — your brav- 
ery as a boy — his great pride in you. He knew 
he could trust me and he told me all about his 
recent mistakes and your timely rescue. He 
cried like a child. He said some new friend had 
advanced money to you, and with it you had 
saved him. I can see it all, Wilmot. Mrs. 
Sennett is that friend, and you felt so grateful 
that you impulsively — Oh, Wilmot! it would be 
like some women to use a thing like that to gain 
a purpose — they say she did it once. And it 
would be like you — in a moment of great grati- 
tude to yield, and — ” 

“Please don’t, Muriel!” he cried almost with 
a sob. “Don’t you see I cannot bear more. My 
honor binds me not to be as frank with you as I 
should like.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 183 

“I have not told you the real object of my 
visit yet,” the girl said with white lips. “I have 
money in my own name, Wilmot. I want to 
advance it to you. You feel that you owe her a 
debt and — ” 

“It is not a question of money, now, Muriel. 
You are an angel to offer it, but I tell you I am 
honor bound to stand to her as her future hus- 
band, let the future be what it may, but I have 
lost the opportunity of proving myself worthy of 
you, and I shall hate myself to the last hour of 
my life.” “Is it really too late ?” asked the girl, 
and she stood up quivering from head to foot. “I 
mean too late to undo what has been done?” 

“Yes, it is too late ; the papers have heaped 
ridicule on her as it is, and more would be said if 
the engagement were broken. I must stand by 
her, Muriel !” She moved to the door and opened 
it. “Then I can do nothing, after all,” she fal- 
tered, white to the lips. 

“Nothing now, Muriel. The die has been 
cast.” He saw her start to put out her hand, but 
her eyes filled, and to hide her emotion, she turned 
away quickly. He stood in the doorway and saw 
her go out into the busy street. 

“ My God ! it’s over !” he cried, going back 
into the room and closing the door. “ It’s over !” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

TWO days later Chester invited Wilmot to take 
* five-o’clock tea with him at the Palace Hotel. 

“It is quite a spacious affair,” said he, “and 
it is jolly to drop into the big tea-room about this 
time of day and listen to the music and watch the 
swells come and go. It seems to be the general 
meeting-place of the ultra fashionable.” 

The tea-room was a big circular space in the 
centre of the hotel. It was roofed with glass 
and decorated with palms and flowers. A Hun- 
garian orchestra in native costumes, played in a 
balcony overhead. At the numerous round tables 
were seated men in business dress and ladies in 
street attire. Fans revolved overhead and a 
fountain threw its spray almost to the apex of the 
tent-shaped roof. 

It was delightfully cool and pleasant. As they 
sat down the two men had the entire room before 
their eyes. Through doors opening in all direc- 
tions they could look down long corridors which 
were seemingly endless vistas of plants, statues 
in niches, and tall gold-framed mirrors. 

Chester ordered a pot of chocolate with 
whipped cream and cakes. 

184 


The Woman Who Trusted 185 

“I don’t see a soul that I know,” he said to 
Wilmot, “but it is not always so. Many friends 
of mine drop in here in the afternoon. I always 
feel somehow that I’m quite in the procession 
when I come here in this frock suit. People don’t 
know but that I am a Western cattle king. Some- 
times they look at me as if they were wondering 
who I am, and even that is pleasanter than having 
them know. There are so many grades of society. 
That young lady in the exquisite organdie on our 
right would think we had plebeian taste if she 
noticed our chocolate and cakes. She ordered 
that pink ice because it harmonizes with her gown. 
Who knows ? She may have borrowed her clothes, 
or bought them second-hand. Life is as delicately 
graduated from hardship to luxury as a stalk of 
asparagus from leathery butt to juicy tip. But 
what luck have you had in the last few days, old 
man ?” 

“Nothing but continual disappointments,” 
answered Wilmot. “ They pile up on me.” 

“Another rejection?” guessed Chester. 

“Worse than that.” 

“What can be worse to an author?” 

“ King and Burton are going to delay the 
publication of my book.” 

“ For what reason?” 


1 86 The Woman Who Trusted 

“They gave none; their communication was 
extremely vague.” 

Chester gazed at Wilmot steadily. He was 
silent for several minutes, then he brought his fist 
down on the table firmly. 

“As a friend I must talk plainly to you,” he 
said. “You have more right to know the true 
situation than anyone else.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Chester cleared his throat and crossed his legs 
under the table. 

“ You know perhaps that old Burton is a very 
cranky fellow, and that both members of the firm 
are old-fashioned — genuine out-of-date old fogies.” 

“ I have been told so.” 

“Harrison seems to have heard something 
relative to your book from his friend, Lester. To 
make a long story short, he says the reports 
about your engagement in the papers infuriated 
the firm to such a degree that they positively 
ordered Soul to return the manuscript to you. 
It seems, however, that Soul made them under- 
stand that if they returned the manuscript after 
having signed the contract, you might recover 
damages. Harrison is not positive, but he thinks, 
as they made no agreement as to the date of pub- 
lication, that their intentions are simply to tire 
out your patience by repeated delays.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


187 


Wilmot was looking down the long corridor 
in front of him. Not a muscle of his face had 
moved. 

“ I am not wholly unprepared for it,” he said; 
“ Soul refused to speak to me the other day on 
the street. The truth is, I am not unprepared 
for anything. I am glad you told me, however. 
It is well to know what to count on.” 

When Wilmot parted with Chester a few 
minutes later he went to call on Mrs. Sennett. 
Her apartments were filled with the delightful 
fragrance of fresh violets, and she met him with 
a welcoming smile. 

“ Oh you truant, you tardy man !” she cried. 
“ Where have you been ? ” 

She took his hand in one of hers, and laid 
the other playfully on his arm. Had he been a 
moral coward, he would have begged for his 
release, less a gentleman, he would have torn his 
arm from her clasp. He allowed her to lead him 
into the salon, and arrange the pillows on the 
lounge for him to sit down. 

“You do not look well,” she went on gently. 
“ Too much work or worry, I am sure ? ” 

He nodded, but said nothing. 

“ I have a delicate matter to speak to you 
about,” continued Mrs. Sennett, sitting down 


The Woman Who Trusted 


1 88 

beside him and interlacing her fingers. “ Oh, 
no ! ” she ejaculated suddenly. “ It is not about 
those horrid newspaper articles. I know they 
must have annoyed you considerably, but as an 
author who is constantly before the public, you’ll 
soon get accustomed to that sort of thing. It is 
the penalty of genius. Mrs Langdon was saying 
only this morning that it would, after all, give 
your book a boom. She says it makes little 
difference what the sensation is, so that it brings 
the author’s name prominently before the public. 
But — but what are you looking at me like that 
for?” 

“Have you,” he asked, “have you been 
talking to that woman ? ” 

Mrs. Sennett laughed. 

“ Oh, I see, you thought I’d snub her ! No, I 
wouldn’t gratify her to that extent, besides, the 
notice was — oh, so much milder than I thought it 
would be ! The editor must have blue-penciled 
it. He was afraid he’d be sued for slander. No, 
I treat her as if nothing had happened. It would 
not do to act otherwise. She is a dangerous 
woman — a dangerous one, or a good one, just as 
she feels disposed. She borrowed my carriage 
and horses this morning to drive an English club- 
woman about town. I hadn’t the heart to refuse 


The Woman Who Trusted 189 

her. She knows how to get round one. She is 
going to give your book a catchy review, she 
says. She asked me yesterday when it would be 
out. I could not tell her, and as you were not 
here, I telegraphed King and Burton, and inci- 
dentally mentioned that I wanted 500 copies. 
They answered that nothing had been decided on 
as to the date of publication. I thought you 
said—” 

He sprang to his feet, and stood before her 
quite red in the face, a quivering hand resting on 
the table. 

“Iam sorry you did that,” he said. “You 
ought not to have applied to them.” 

“ But why, pray ? They don’t get many 
orders — cash orders like mine. Indeed, I thought 
it would make them realize your importance.” 

Had she been a man he would have cursed 
her for stupidity. As it was, a certain solicitous 
expression in her eyes reminded him of his 
mother. After all, she had been his friend in 
a time of great need. He sat down. 

“They have delayed the publication of my 
book,” he explained, determining not to reveal 
the whole truth,” and I thought that a request 
like yours might vex them a little that is all.” 

“ Oh, I’m sure you are mistaken,” she said. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


190 

“But here is what I wanted to see you about. It 
is a question of money. It is strange, but that 
seems always our topic of conversation. I may 
as well come to the point and be done with it, and 
you — you silly, sensitive man — must be reason- 
able. I have more money than I can use, and you 
are having an awfully hard time of it. You will 
have some expense in preparing for our wedding 
and — well, the truth is, I want to lend you some 
money.” 

She saw him draw himself up and thrust his 
hand into the pocket of his coat. He drew out 
an envelope upon which she saw her name. 

“You are very kind,” he said, “but I could 
never think of taking another cent from you. On 
the contrary, I am ready to make a small payment 
on that other loan. It is not much, but I am glad 
to be able to pay something.” 

“Mr. Burian — Wilmot, don’t be ridiculous!” 
cried Mrs. Sennett, impatiently throwing the 
envelope into his lap. “You must be sensible! 
I — I really don’t know what to do with you ; we 
simply can’t go on like this. With all my money, 
it would be foolish for me to continue giving it 
right and left, as I often do, to strangers, when 
the man who is to marry me needs the actual com- 
forts of life. You see how absurd it is.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 19 1 

'‘Then we shall have to part,” said Wilmot 
firmly. 

“You mean to break the engagement ?” 

“ It seems that you are about to do it.” 

“ I meant nothing of the kind,” said Mrs. 
Sennett, catching a deep breath. “ I could never 
give you up now. I have come to look upon you 
as my future husband. I could never face the 
ridicule of the public. They would be sure to 
say that the notices in the papers had turned you 
against me.” 

“We’ll say nothing more about it, then,” 
Wilmot remarked, wearily. He laid the envelope 
on the table. “But you must not refuse this. 
If you do we shall certainly quarrel.” 

“Have your own way, then,” she laughed. 
“After all, you are paying me a high compliment. 
If the public only understood you, they’d never 
charge you with marrying for money.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 


HE evening appointed for Louis Chester’s 



* marriage arrived. Burian was with him in 
his room as he was putting the finishing touches 
on his toilet. 

“I never saw you look so well,” remarked 
Wilmot. “How do you feel ?” 

“Tip-top,” laughed Chester. “I never felt 
better in my life. It is going to be the making of 
me, Burian. The only thing that is bothering me 
now is that I must wait half an hour before she 
is mine. Now I am dressed, I don’t know how to 
pass the time. I wonder if I couldn’t write a 
salable joke.” 

“Who is to be here?” asked Wilmot. 

Chester was for the fortieth time adjusting his 
necktie. He seemed to hesitate before answering, 
then he said : 

“Not many. You see, as we couldn’t have a 
crowd, we thought the fewer there were present 
the fewer would be offended by being left out. 
Weyland will be on hand, of course. Harrison, 
blast his picture, has sneaked off. He is awfully 
upset, and I don’t blame him a bit. He hoped 
all along that she would finally throw me over. 
He actually turned white when I told him.” 


192 


The Woman Who Trusted 


193 


“ Any ladies coming?” questioned Wilmot. 

“Only Mrs. Drule and her daughter, and Dor- 
othea begged so hard to get in to give us a send- 
off that I couldn’t refuse. When she sees the 
bride’s dress she’ll be inspired.” 

“Is that all the ladies?” persisted the ques- 
tioner. 

“All?” hesitatingly, “yes, old man, that’s all. 
Now run to the studio and hurry them. The Rev. 
Mr. Blake went up some time ago. Go entertain 
him. Dorothea will strike us at the last minute, 
pencil and pad in hand, a messenger boy at her 
heels. I’ll like her write-up if she’ll only do jus- 
tice to the bride, and not make me out too old.” 

Wilmot found the minister sitting bolt upright 
in a corner, his hands folded in front of him. 
Wilmot introduced himself, and gave him a few 
directions about the entry of the bridal party, and 
where they were to stand. 

Weyland came in and blustered about arrang- 
ing curtains, screens, flowers and hangings. 

“We are going to lose her, Burian,” he sighed. 
“ The Lord only knows how I shall get along, but 
I’ll follow them to Boston before long. Louis 
has simply got to adopt a father-in-law.” 

Mrs. Drule, a large florid woman, and her 
daughter, a tall old maid, came in and shook 


i 9 4 


The Woman Who Trusted 


hands with Weyland. He introduced them to 
the two gentlemen as old friends of his and 
Aline’s. Then something happened which caused 
Wilmot’s heart to stop beating for an instant. A 
maid came in from Aline’s room, leaving the door 
open for an instant, and he caught sight of the 
bride in a gray tailor-made gown before a pier- 
glass, and standing by her was Muriel Fairchild. 
At that instant Muriel noticed the open door and 
went to close it. As she did so her eyes met 
Wilmot’s, and she flushed a little and bowed. The 
door shut her from his view, but it was only for a 
moment, for she came into the studio. 

“Miss Weyland wishes you,” she said to the 
maid, and she advanced to Wilinot, her hand ex- 
tended. There was a rigidness almost of fear 
about her lips. 

“You did not know I was here,” she said sig- 
nificantly, half reproachfully. 

“ I had no idea of it,” as he caught her warm, 
pulsing hand in his. 

“ Mr. Chester sent a carriage for me,” she ex- 
plained. “ He avoided telling you I was coming. 
He did not want to cause his best man to desert 
him at the last moment.” 

“Don’t be hard on me, Muriel,” Wilmot 
whispered. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


T 95 


“ Well, you have persistently avoided me on 
all other occasions I am sure. But I am glad I 
came, even if you are ashamed to meet me, for 
Aline is the dearest little woman I ever knew. I 
fell in love with her as soon as Mr. Chester intro- 
duced us. He told me not a single girl near her 
own age would be here, so I came early to help 
her with my valuable suggestions.” 

“You couldn’t do otherwise, with that big 
heart of yours.” His eyes met hers with a glance 
that told her more than his words. 

“I really wanted to meet you, too, particularly,” 
said Muriel, and now her face hardened and lost a 
little of its color. “ The truth is, I have a mes- 
sage for you.” 

“ For me ?” 

“Yes; your father has written to me about 
you.” 

“ About me ?” 

“Yes; you must not blame him.” Muriel 
moved to a window that looked down into the 
street. He saw that she wanted to speak to him 
before the others came, for she spoke hurriedly. 
“No, you mustn’t blame him, for he is deeply 
troubled about you.” 

“I don’t quite understand,” said Wilmot, per- 
plexed. “I really do not.” 

13 — Woman W/10 Trusted 


196 The Woman Who Trusted 

“It is very hard for me to bring up a certain 
disagreeable subject again, Wilmot,” twisting her 
white fingers together. “But I must, for he has im- 
plored me to do so. You know it is natural for 
him to think you and I meet frequently, as we did 
at home.” 

“I know,” said Wilmot ; “go on please.” 

“ He has read the announcement of your 
engagement,” said Muriel. “ It was copied at 
length in the home paper. There are, naturally, 
many comments down there and he is troubled 
about the lady being — being older than you, and, 
as she is rich, he is afraid his recent trouble had 
something to do with bringing it about. He im- 
plored me to see you (I got his letter this morn- 
ing) and beg you to take no step without fully 
considering it in every way.” 

“He suspects — ” The words Wilmot had 

framed in his mind died away into nothingness. 

“ Yes, that is it,” said Muriel. 

Wilmot tried to speak, but he could not. There 
was almost an appeal for mercy in the tender, 
worshipful glance he gave her. His hand quivered 
as he caught the window curtain, drew it aside, 
and looked out into the gathering night. 

The tones of a street piano came up mellowed 
by the height and the city’s monotone. A group 


The Woman Who Trusted 


197 


of little girls was dancing on the pavement under 
the glare of the electric light. They were whirling 
in pairs, throwing out their feet in joyous unison. 
He heard a loud laugh from the spectators. A 
man was trying to mount a bicycle and had fallen. 
The world down there seemed so light-hearted, 
while he was — ” 

“Forgive me,” broke in Muriel. “I see I 
have hurt your feelings.” 

She turned to Weyland, who was approaching, 
and greeted him with a smile. 

“How was she, Miss Fairchild?” he asked. 

“The prettiest bride I ever saw, Mr. Weyland. 
You have reason to be proud of her.” 

The door bell rang and Weyland bent forward 
to see who was coming. 

“ It's Mrs. Langdon,” he said. “We were to 
wait for her. Now, Burian, run down stairs and 
bring up your end of the business. I’ll see to the 
bride.” 

With a smile Muriel bowed to Wilmot as he 
withdrew. 

At the door he met Mrs. Langdon. 

“How do you do, Mr. Burian,” she said sheep- 
ishly, as she raised her hand and gave it a down- 
ward crook before his eyes. 

“I am quite well I thank you,” said Wilmot, 


198 The Woman Who Trusted 

coldly. He held her hand for an insant ; then 
went on down to Chester’s rooms. 

“ By Jove, I thought you never would come. 
What kept you so long ? Oh, I know ; it was 
Miss Fairchild. 

Chester stood before the glass and gave an- 
other tug at his necktie. 

“You must forgive me, old man,” he added. 
“ I wanted her to know Aline, and then — well, to 
be frank, I hoped that if I brought you two to- 
gether at a wedding, something might come of it 
— something that would do away with the one 
glaring blunder of your life, and make you, event- 
ually, as happy as I am. Think it over, Burian ! 
I love you too well — but you know how I feel 
about it. Go ahead. Lead me to my queen.” 

As the two young men stood in the corridor 
at the door of the studio, they saw Mrs. Drule 
seated at the piano, looking first into Aline’s room 
and then back at them. 

The minister with a conscious air of dignity 
stood under the chandelier which was profusely 
hung with roses. 

“Get ready,” cried Mrs. Drule, “and when I 
have played a bar or so come in. Be sure to 
keep step.” She evidently got a signal from Wey- 
land at the door of his daughters room, for she 


The Woman Who Trusted 199 

began to play a wedding march, and then nodded 
to them to come in. 

As they entered, Weyland, his daughter on his 
arm, advanced to meet them. Then the best man 
and the father stepped aside and the couple stood 
before the minister, their heads bowed. 

Dorothea, pencil in hand, was leaning over a 
piece of paper lying before her on the top of the 
piano. There was a wistful, far-away expression 
in her eyes as they rested on the bride that made 
her look more youthful. It was as if she were 
recalling some unsullied period in her life before 
she had drifted to the shore of Bohemia. Wey- 
land’s eyes were moist. Chester swept the assem- 
bled group with one exultant glance and then 
looked down. 

The flowers hanging from the chandelier, cast 
a shadow over the young bride. The minister 
coughed, and glanced at Dorothea. It was as if he 
were wondering if her satirical pen would spare 
his awkwardness. If she made sport of anything, 
he thought, it would he his over-abundance of 
flesh of which he was day by day growing more 
sensitive. He decided that her attack would be 
on that line, seeing that she was a thin woman. 

Silence fell on the room. All sound was now 
on the outside of the building. The street piano 


200 


The Woman Who Trusted 


had moved a few doors further on and its notes 
were softer. The tune was “ Marguerite.” 

The short ceremony occupied only a minute. 
Weyland stepped forward and kissed his daugh- 
ter, while her head rested on his massive 
shoulder and then he shook hands with Chester. 

“She’s a fine girl, Louis,” was all he said. 
“ She’ll make you a good wife.” 

Then everyone came forward and congratu- 
lated the smiling couple. 

As Wiimot clasped his friend’s hand and 
offered his best wishes, Chester simply said : 

“Go and do the same thing yourself, Burian. 
Do it, I tell you. You and I happen to know the 
only two girls in the universe any way.” 

Wiimot made no reply. He gave his place to 
James Fitch Ellerton, who had just arrived in his 
business suit and stood offering congratulations 
and apologies for his appearance all in the same 
breath. 

“ Couldn’t stay down stairs after Mrs. 
McGowan told me what was going on and that 
you would take the train in a few minutes. I got 
Weyland’s note only a minute ago and had no 
time to dress. I hope I’ll do.” 

The whole room joined in a merry laugh. The 
street piano had come round to the front door of 


The Woman Who Trusted 


201 


the building, and its lively tune set Mrs. Drule to 
beating time with her foot. 

Weyland imposed silence on them all by rais- 
ing his hand. 

“ I am not going to make a speech,” he said. 
“ But I want to thank you for coming. I would 
take all of you over to Rickers and give you a 
big dinner, but I can’t dine merrily with my little 
one speeding away. They have only a few min- 
utes to catch their train and the carriage is 
ready.” 

Everyone descended to the entrance below. 
Mrs. McGowan brought out a little bag of rice 
and Ellerton got ready to throw it after the couple 
as they went out. 

Chester looked prouder and younger than 
ever as he came down the steps with his bride. 
As she said farewell to Muriel she kissed her, 
and Wilmot, standing near, heard her whisper : 

“We have already become such good friends. 
Now, don’t forget your promise to visit me be- 
fore going South.” 

Muriel said she would remember. The couple 
stepped into the carriage, and under a shower of 
rice from Ellerton’s energetic hands the four- 
wheeler rolled away. Another immediately took 
its place and the driver jumped down from his 
seat and opened the door. 


202 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“Oh, I confess I was about to forget you !” 
exclaimed Weyland to Muriel. “This is your 
carriage. Chester gave me most explicit instruc- 
tions to give you over into Burian’s charge. He 
knew I would be too badly shaken up to take care 
of even a pretty girl.” 

“ Mr. Burian will be quite equal to it, whether 
the girl is pretty or not,” smiled Muriel. 

“Are you ready?” asked Wilmot, eagerly. 
He would not have volunteered to escort her 
home, but now that Chester had, with such evi- 
dent good will, arranged it, he felt blissfully irre- 
sponsible— joyously reckless. He was tingling 
all over with delight at the prospect of that brief 
possession of her, despite the consequences. He 
hardly heard anything else that was said. It 
seemed to him needlessly long — Muriel’s hand- 
shaking with Weyland and her exchange of cold 
platitudes with Mrs. Langdon. 

“ I have heard much of your voice at the 
Galatin,” said Mrs. Langdon. “Those who have 
heard you sing tell me you undoubtedly have a fu- 
ture before you. “You must come to my Thurs- 
day Afternoons in my rooms,” she continued. 
“Very often I have the best talent in the city. 
Singers have told me that my ‘At Homes’ bring 
them very quickly into notice.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 203 

“ Thank you/’ said Muriel, still coldly. 

“You perhaps know of my newspaper work,” 
ran on Mrs. Langdon. “You must let me have 
your photograph and some data about yourself. 
A good write-up in my column would help you 
materially. I seldom make such a suggestion, 
but you really have a promising future.” 

“You are very kind,” said Muriel, in no little 
embarrassment; ‘‘but I am not ready to sing be- 
fore the general public yet, and my father and 
mother would not care to see my name and picture 
in the papers.” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


ILMOT led Muriel to the carriage and they 



* * whirled away. He was so full of happi- 
ness — short-lived though he knew it would be — 
that he was simply content to sit and realize that 
they were near together — that he and she were 
enclosed by such narrow walls, and all alone. 

The carriage rolled smoothly over the asphalt 
pavement. The street lights nowand then threw 
faint rays into their faces. 

‘‘Are you angry with me, Wilmot?” Muriel 
questioned in a low voice. 

“For what?” he asked, struggling to rise 
sufficiently above the flood of bliss in which he 
was submerged to grasp her meaning. 

“ For allowing Mr. Chester to entrap you this 
way. It would have been easy for me to have 
made some excuse and released you. It’s all my 


fault.” 


“I adore him for it. He is a brick, Muriel. 
It is wrong I know, under the circumstances, but 
I was famishing to see you, if only for a moment.” 

The clatter of passing vehicles was so loud 
that she was obliged to put her head very near 
his own to hear what he said. 


204 


The Woman Who Trusted 205 

“ And do you think I have not wanted to see 
you, Wilmot ? Oh, I could never tell you how I 
have suffered! Coming to New York while you 
were here was my dream. To be here with you 
and see you often and hear you tell about your 
ups and downs in your work, to have met your 
friends and entered the life you loved so much 
would have been joy to me, but as it is, I simply 
have no right to you. You belong to another, 
and that other! Oh, Wilmot, she can not give 
you what God intended to bless you with — gen- 
uine happiness. She can not, Wilmot ! I have 
thought over it night after night, day after day, 
till I am almost mad. Don’t think me forward. 
It is not for myself I am pleading, but for you— 
yourself — your future, which we have talked about 
so much in the past.” 

“ I can see no way out of it, darling,” he said. 
‘‘I did not realize what I was doing. I confess — ” 

“I know exactly how it happened,” broke in 
the girl, her voice filling with determination. “I 
know how it was. It was a generous impulse on 
your part. She had done so much for you in a 
disinterested way, helping you with your book, 
helping you with money when your father was in 
such trouble. You needn’t explain. I know all 
about it. I see it as clearly as if I had been 
there.” 


206 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“I am glad you do understand it, Muriel,” he 
said, taking her hand and pressing it. “If you 
had thought me — you understand — if you had 
misjudged me I’d never have stood it as long as I 
have. After all, the knowledge that I still have 
your friendship — your pity has kept me up.” 

They were both silent for a moment and then 
he burst out impulsively : 

“ I am going to simply leave it to you, dear 
little girl,” he said recklessly. “I have made a 
fool of myself, but it lies with you to direct my 
course. I put myself in your hands. If you say 
so, I’ll never visit her aoain. I’ll write and break 
the engagement to-night.” 

Muriel started and then was silent. They 
would soon be at the Galatin. Their interview 
would be over in a moment. He saw, in the 
flash from a brilliantly lighted shop window, that 
she was pale and quivering. She drew her hand 
from his clasp, and put it to her face and leaned 
forward, her elbows on her knees. Presently 
she looked up. 

“ I have pictured to myself many times lately 
that you might put the responsibilty on me like 
this, and every time I have said that I would ad- 
vise you to leave her, but I simply can not do it 
now. God never seems to bless things asked for 
in a selfish spirit — and this would be selfish.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 207 

She was silent for another moment. He made 
an effort to regain her hand, but she firmly 
pressed it down in her lap. 

“ Wilmot, you remember you kissed me good- 
bye that night in Dadeville?” 

“ As if I could forget it !” 

'‘Well, ever since then there has really seemed 
to be a sacred bond between us. No other man 
ever kissed me, Wilmot.” 

“ I know that, Muriel.” 

“Have you ever kissed — her, Wilmot?” 

“Never, nor shall I as long as God lets me 
live !” 

Ahead of them they could see the line of 
cabs and carriages drawn up in front of the 
Galatin. 

“I am going to leave it with God,” said 
Muriel. “I have been praying thathe would make 
something happen to save you and I shall con- 
tinue to do so. I believe to-night that my prayer 
will be answered.” 

The horses had stopped in front of the wide 
entrance of the hotel. Wilmot opened the door 
of the carriage and helped her up the stone steps. 
His emotions had so overcome him that he could 
not trust his voice to utterance. He only doffed 
his hat and bowed. Then he re-entered the 
carriage and was driven back to his rooms. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

E next morning Wilmot sorely missed the 



* companionship of Chester as he went down 
alone to the cafe. He had not thought his friend’s 
departure would pierce his heart so keenly. As 
he was returning to his room he saw the postman 
delivering letters to Mrs. McGowan. Two were 
for him. One was an acceptance of a short story 
by the Decade . The other was from his father. He 
opened it as he walked towards Madison Square. 

“Dear Wilmot,” the letter said, “Mr. Den- 
ison left yesterday for New York. He will be at 
the Lester House. Go down and see him as soon 
as you get this, for I have intrusted a thousand 
dollars to him for you. I sold him the remainder 
of my cotton factory stock at a good round profit. 
It had been up as collateral security for money 
borrowed by me, but the mill declared a remark- 
ably big dividend last week and my stock almost 
doubled in value. This puts me out of debt, and 
I owe my salvation to you. I don’t know how I 
may have embarrassed you by taking this money, 
so I make haste to return it.” 

The letter was filled with news from home, 
and expressions of love and gratitude, but Wilmot 
could hardly read it through for his satisfaction 
over the news regarding the money. He would 
now be able to return Mrs. Sennett’s loan. 


208 


The Woman Who Trusted 


209 


He did not sit down in the park as he had at 
first intended, but set up a brisk pace down 
Broadway. Reaching the Lester House about 
ten o’clock, he was told that Mr. Denison had 
gone out and would return at noon. Wilmot 
waited round the hotel till noon, but still the 
Dadeville merchant did not come. 

About four o’clock in the afternoon Mr. Den- 
ison appeared. 

“I am awfully sorry to have kept you waiting,” 
he apologized, “but I was busy making some 
selections in my line up town, and forgot that you 
might call. Here is that money, young man. It’s 
a wonder I have not been robbed of it. I have 
been in the thickest of crowds.” 

Wilmot took the large envelope. 

“It was very good of you to bring it,” he said. 

Then Mr. Denison would have him go up to 
his room, and they remained there talking over 
the news in Dadeville till six o’clock. When 
Wilmot reached home it was growing dark. 

He found a message from Mrs. Sen nett, 
which ran as follows : 

“Be sure to come this evening; I have a 
request to make.” 

He went up to dress. He was glad of an 
excuse to call so early, for he wanted to give her 
the money he had just received. 


210 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ I could not explain in my message,” she 
remarked as she came to greet him ; “ but I must 
have an escort this evening.” 

“Where do you wish to go?” he asked. 

“Oh, not far,” she laughed. “It is only down 
stairs. A madame somebody is going to give a 
swell musicale.” 

“ Madame Angier?” he asked, his heart 
sinking. 

“That’s the name, do you know her?” 

“I met her only once,” he replied. “ She is 
the teacher of my friend — of a young lady from 
down home — Miss Fairchild.” 

“I didn’t know she was a friend of yours,” 
said Mrs. Sennett. “She seems such a nice girl 
— a perfect lady in every way. She has become 
quite the rage in the house. The Misses Van 
Tauber have taken her up and to be a favorite 
in that quarter is all that is necessary to social 
success.” 

He was glad to hear the maid call to her from 
her dressing room at that moment. He did not 
want to talk about Muriel. He sat down at an 
open window and looked out on Fifth avenue. 
He was wondering if Muriel would sing during 
the evening. He told himself that he would 
flatly refuse to escort Mrs. Sennett to the affair. 


The Woman Who Trusted 21 1 

Then he remembered the money his father had 
sent. 

He took the package of bank bills from his 
pocket. He would lose no time in paying the 
odious debt. To feel that he did not owe her a 
cent would restore to him a part, if not all, of his 
lost self-respect. She came in at that moment 
rubbing on a pair of long white gloves. 

“I have a little matter of business to settle 
with you, Mrs. Sennett,” he remarked. 

“ Business ? The idea !” 

He laid the bank notes on the table. My 
father has sent me the money you were kind 
enough to advance, I need not tell you how grate- 
ful I am for the use of it.” 

For the first time he saw her show genuine 
anger. 

“I don’t want it!” she said, her eyes flashing. 

“I am sorry,” he replied, “ neither do I — at 
present.” 

The playful tone with which he ended his 
retort seemed to mollify her. 

“ You’d make a saint angry,” she said. “Just 
when one is beginning to hope that one can help 
you a little, you spoil everything with vulgar cash 
settlements. Come, let’s go down. I hear the 

orchestra.” 

14 — Woman Who Trusted \ 


2 1 2 The Woman Who Trusted 

She opened the drawer of a brass-trimmed 
Louis Quinze writing desk and carelessly drop- 
ping the money into it, she turned the key. 

“I am sorry I cannot go with you,” he said, 
rising and taking his hat. 

“ Why not ?” 

He hesitated just an instant. 

“ I am going elsewhere.” 

“But I need you,” a troubled look was on her 
powdered face. She sat down heavily and con- 
tinued to rub on her gloves. The truth is, Wil- 
mot, if there was ever a time you should stand by 
me it is to-night.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

She leaned towards him anxiously. 

“ Cards were sent by Madame Angier, or 
someone acting for her, to all the ladies in the 
house except myself. I was not going to be in- 
sulted in that way. I applied to the landlord, 
reminding him that the recitals in his house had 
always been free to guests and threatening to 
leave at once. He arranged it,” Mrs. Sennett’s 
tone had grown hard. “ I have it from a reliable 
quarter that he gave Madame Angier to under- 
stand that if she began sowing discord under his 
roof he would pack her out bag and baggage. 
He only lets her remain because she is a drawing 


The Woman Who Trusted 


213 


card with her entertainments. At any rate I 
received an invitation late this afternoon. Now, 
you see why I need you. If you accompany me it 
will be a public confirmation of the report that 
we are engaged, which I understand is being 
doubted, and I shall have the decided advantage 
over them all.” 

Wilmot was hot and cold by turns. When he 
spoke his voice rang out, firm and clear. 

“ I must absolutely decline to go,” he said. 
“ I have pledged myself to marry you, and I am 
still ready to fulfill my agreement, but, in the 
meantime, I shall not contract to exhibit myself 
to gratify any whim of yours.” 

Mrs. Sennett glared, beside herself with min- 
gled disappointment and fury. 

“You won't? Then, pray, what earthly use 
are you to me?” 

“I declare I have never been able to find out,” 
with a satirical laugh. “You might have bought 
a man who would have been more easily molded 
to your purpose.” 

“I see you are trying to quarrel with me, but 
I shall not let you. There!” gasped the widow, 
in a brave effort to appear satisfied with his 
ultimatum. 

Wilmot drew one of the fragile goldleaf chairs 


214 


The Woman Who Trusted 


to him and leaned on it, he was looking straight 
into Mrs. Sennett’ s eyes, thinking of what Muriel 
had said about her praying to God to prevent his 
marriage, and wondering if what he was about to 
say were inspired by a higher power than himself. 

“Mrs. Sennett,” he said. “It may be late to 
say it, but there should be no secrets between 
two people who have agreed to get married. To 
be frank — more frank than I ever thought I could 
be to any woman — I must say I think we have 
made a mistake. We are not suited to each 
other. When I agreed to marry you I was 
acting under the high pressure of blind gratitude. 
Indeed had Mrs. Langdon not burst upon us so 
suddenly I think I should have decided before 
leaving you that afternoon that marriage would 
not be wise between us. If there is any honor- 
able way to — ” 

“I shall not listen to you !” broke in Mrs. 
Sennett, deathly pale. You are angry. I have 
offended you. Let’s stop quarreling. I simply 
can not give you up. Think of all I have done 
for you — think of what a disagreeable light I shall 
be placed in. I made a fool of myself once be- 
fore the public — you will not let them laugh at me 
again, Wilmot? Surely — ” Hot tears were 
springing into her eyes and her voice broke in a 
sob. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


215 


Wilmot’s head went down. He could not help 
pitying her. His decision was not long delayed. 

“No,” he said resignedly, “they shall not rid- 
icule you for what I have done. I don’t think I 
can ever do my whole duty as your husband, but 
I have nothing to say, further than that I want you 
to think it all over. The opinions of the public 
ought not to weigh more than our own best judg- 
ment.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


I I E went down the stairway instead of taking 
* * the elevator, and in pursuing this course 
found himself, when the ground floor was reached, 
in the office of the hotel. Hearing music on his 
right, and seeing a group of men at an open door- 
way, he paused and looked in. 

As he had supposed, it was the salon where 
the musicale was to take place. An Italian pianist 
was seated at the grand piano, his bushy head 
almost touched by the branches of the palms. 
He was striking the key of G for the benefit of 
a round-faced German who was tuning a cello 
between his knees. 

Over the heads of the men in front of him, 
Wilmot saw a room filled with people in evening 
dress. At first he could not see Muriel, but 
finally descried her with Madame Angier and sev- 
eral stylishly attired young ladies near the piano. 
The sight of her caused him to recoil. He did 
not want her to see him there, and yet he had an 
overpowering desire to hear her sing — to see her 
stand out before all that chattering assemblage. 
He knew they would admire and applaud, and he 
wanted to exult in her popularity. Never had he 
216 


The Woman Who Trusted 


217 


magnified his unworthiness as now. She was 
really the star of the evening, the most popular 
person in the house, while he had not even the 
social right to sit before her. 

“That’s her,” remarked a man to another 
near him. “You know the Misses Van Tauber, 
don’t you ?” 

The individual addressed said he did. 

“Well,” went on the informant, “she is right 
between the two, next to the handsome lady, her 
teacher. She can sing. Just wait till she opens 
her mouth.” 

The room was fast filling. Wilmot saw Doro- 
thea Langdon come in at a door which opened in- 
to the ball-room on the left and sit down alone. 
He saw her steadily eying Muriel, and the glance 
had the desired effect, for the girl turned and 
smiled and bowed. Even at that distance, Wil- 
mot could see the faint glow of gratification that 
passed over the tired face of the newspaper 
woman. 

“Hello, what are you doing here?” Wilmot 
felt a hand on his arm. It was Frank Harrison. 

“Only stopped a moment,” answered Wilmot. 

“Going in ?” 

“No.” 

Harrison hesitated. 


218 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“I want to speak to you. Come into the 
smoking-room.” 

Wilmot saw that he was looking downcast 
and troubled, and instantly divined the cause. 
He followed the poet across the hall into the room 
lighted by many gas-jets under red shades. 

“Sit down,” said Harrison, extending a cigar. 
“Smoke?” 

“No, thanks.” 

“I understand you were at the little affair last 
night,” said Harrison. He struck a match and 
held the flame to his cigar. Despite his faultless 
dress, he had never appeared to such a bad ad- 
vantage. His eyes were shot with blood and his 
skin was yellow. His hands shook. 

“Yes, I was best man,” answered Wilmot, 
the words giving him satisfaction, for he disliked 
the poet. 

Harrison pulled at his cigar, held his lips to- 
gether and let the smoke slowly escape through 
his nose. 

“It must have been a hurried affair, eh ?” 

“It was, rather.” 

“A surprise to you, too, then?” 

“I didn’t know it would come off so soon.” 

“For the last week I have been prepared — I 
mean,” quickly corrected the smoker, “that I 


The Woman Who Trusted 219 

suspected something might eventually happen in 
that quarter, but when I heard that it was to take 
place last night, well, it rather took me off my 
feet.’’ “ She’s a nice girl, but, Burian, do you think 
she — really do you — don’t you think she might 
have done better?” 

“Not in our house,” answered Wilmot with 
emphasis, for he understood the disparaging in- 
sinuation against his friend. “Chester was de- 
cidedly the best man among us. I want you to 
know I think that, Harrison.” 

“Oh, you think so?” with a shrug. “Well, 
Burian, you are welcome to your opinion. I think 
she might have done better, don’t you know, for 
she is a mighty fine woman.” 

Wilmot rose. He was in no humor for argu- 
ing with Harrison or soothing his vanity. He 
was too despondent himself to spend sympathy 
on a man whom he did not like any more than 
he did Harrison. 

The celloist had begun to play Bach’s 
“ Adagio” to the accompaniment of the pianist. 

“I’m going in,” said Harrison, dropping his 
cigar into an ash-receiver. “I know the Misses 
Van Tauber.” 

Wilmot paused at the door of the salon. He 
saw Harrison make his way to a chair near the 


220 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Misses Van Tauber. They greeted him with wel- 
coming smiles and introduced him to Muriel. 

Again the oppressive sense of inferiority de- 
scended upon Burian. A celebrated tenor was go- 
ing to sing. Wilrnot wandered aimlessly through the 
adjoining reading and writing-rooms, and when he 
heard a loud clapping of hands he returned to the 
salon. Madame Angier was at the piano and 
Muriel was standing before the audience sweetly 
bowing in recognition of the greeting. Wilrnot 
held his breath when she began to sing. Her 
self-possession, beauty and innate dignity thrilled 
him. Her vocal power astonished him, too. He 
had heard her sing at home, but she had told him 
that she never sang half so well as when under 
the inspiration of her teacher, and in a room large 
enough to give her voice full compass. 

“ Mon coeur , souvre a ta voix ” was the song 
she sang, and so completely was Wilrnot domi- 
nated by the clear, sweet quality of her voice that 
the social barrier between them seemed swept 
away. As he looked at her across the vast ex- 
panse of elaborate gowns and waving fans he 
saw only the pretty little miss he had first admired 
in short dresses and braided hair going to and 
from school past the law office where he was 
studying. Then the salient events of their later 


The Woman Who Trusted 221 

friendship, and exchange of hopes and plans for 
the great future blazed before him as clearly as 
stars in a black sky. With a sharp pain at heart 
he said to himself: “How beautiful! She was 
mine — mine — till I lost her ! Oh, God, till I lost 
her!” 

The song was over. Its last lingering notes 
died in a breathless room. The singer calmly 
folded her music, and with eyes modestly down- 
cast moved back to her chair between the Misses 
Van Tauber, who were blinking elatedly in the 
reflected light of their companion’s success. The 
applause was deafening. It died down finally 
and then rose into a storm again. Madame 
Angier was smiling adoringly at her pupil, and 
with her eyes suggesting an encore. Frank Har- 
rison and the Misses Van Tauber invited her by 
word of mouth; the former would evidently have 
conducted her to the piano had there been any 
need of his services. 

Her encore was “Way Down Upon the 
Suwanee River,” a song that Wilmot had heard 
from his cradle up, but never with such heavenly 
melody and infinite pathos as to-night. If he 
could have died then and ended the hopeless 
agony of his darkened life he would have accepted 
that decree of fate. He was tired of the struggle 


222 


The Woman Who Trusted 


to keep intact his ideal of an honorable man. All 
the powers of the seen and unseen universe 
seemed to have joined forces to overthrow him. 
The room seemed to grow misty before his sight. 
He turned away even before the song was fin- 
ished, and like a man drunk from despair, he 
hurried out into the night. 

“Cab, sir? Cab, sir?” cried a number of 
uniformed creatures from their high seats, but he 
plunged on down the street as if fleeing from some 
unseen foe. At the corner he turned and looked 
up at the lighted windows of Mrs. Sennett’s 
apartments, then he groaned, ground his teeth, 
clenched his hands and plunged on again. 

As he lay in bed that night he recalled what 
Muriel had said about praying that his marriage 
to Mrs. Sennett might not take place, and he got 
up and knelt by his bedside, but it had been a 
long time since he had framed any of his numer- 
ous petitions in words and he found himself 
unable to pray. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


NE afternoon a week later, Mrs. Langdon 



went to an exhibition of pictures in the 
gallery of the Water-color Club. Her purpose 
was to make a list of the best and most promising 
things for a critical write-up in the Advance. Art 
was not really her line so she depended largely 
for her opinion on what was said in the catalogue 
about the respective artists. She was standing 
before the picture of a “Lady in Brown,” which 
had been considered sufficiently noteworthy to 
deserve special mention, and a half-tone repro- 
duction, when Muriel Fairchild and the Misses 
Van Tauber entered the room. 

Mrs. Langdon closed her notebook and trans- 
ferred her attention from the picture to the girl 
whom she had admired ever since Muriel had 
refused to allow her portrait to appear in the Ad- 
vance. Muriel recalled to her mind a misty ideal 
she had created for herself before the greed for 
notoriety had taken hold of her. She told herself 
it did one good to look at a creature so young, so 
genuine, so unspoiled. 

The three girls had paused on the opposite 
side of the room to look at a picture, but it had 


224 The Woman Who Trusted 

not the power to hold the sad-eyed attention of 
Muriel. 

Mrs. Langdon caught her glance, and while 
she held it, she determined she would not be the 
first to bow, and wondered if Muriel would again 
recognize her. To her surprise, the girl smiled, 
nodded, and excusing herself from her compan- 
ions, came directly to her. 

“I was so sorry not to have been in when you 
called the other day, Mrs. Langdon,” she said, 
holding out her hand. “ I had gone to a matinee.” 

“I was sorry to miss you,” returned the news- 
paper woman sincerely. “ Really I was just a 
little afraid you would not care to see me.” 

“I — I don’t understand,” stammered Muriel, 
somewhat embarrassed. 

Mrs. Langdon laughed and glanced towards 
the Misses Van Tauber whose straight backs 
could be seen going through the doorway of the 
next room. 

“ I was afraid you might be a little under the 
influence of those ultra fashionable friends of 
yours, who, I think, may look down on my 
calling.” 

“I don’t know how they regard such things,” 
returned Muriel, quite inadequate to the situation, 
“but I am sure I have not taken such an unjust 
view,” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


225 

Mrs. Langdon fumbled with her notebook for 
a moment, and then she said : 

“I am fond of being perfectly truthful and 
frank, at least, occasionally, Miss Fairchild, and I 
am going to confess it was really a sort of guilty 
feeling that made me fancy you might not want 
to meet me again.” 

“I am still in the dark,” said Muriel, smiling. 

“You see,” explained Mrs. Langdon, “when 
I saw you at the wedding the other night I noticed 
how agitated Mr. Burian seemed by your presence 
and later I discovered that he was an old friend 
of yours.” 

“Yes?” murmured the girl, still mystified. 

“ I could not help seeing that you like him, 
sympathize with him, and all that, and I did not 
see how you could forgive me for what I wrote 
about his engagement.” 

“Oh!” exclaimed Muriel, “I begin to under- 
stand. I did not, however, know you did that. 
Oh, how could you ?” 

Mrs. Langdon drew her to a seat. 

“Sit down with me just a moment,” she said, 
tremulously. “I want to try to explain — to justify 
myself a little if I can. It looks like a very mean 
thing, but still — ” 

Mrs. Langdon went no further. 


226 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“But still — ” suggested Muriel, firmly. 

“I really thought it would be the means of 
bringing him to his senses,” went on the news- 
paper woman. “My method would have suc- 
ceeded with nine men out of ten, and I can’t tell 
now why it failed to work with Mr. Burian. He 
can’t be in love with her; it is absurd! But that 
afternoon when she announced their engagement 
to me in his presence I saw his danger. I had 
met him, and liked him, and predicted his success; 
but when I saw she had trapped him I thought a 
sharp bit of public ridicule would bring him to 
his senses, and that the engagement would be 
broken.” 

“A man as honorable as he would never for- 
sake a woman under such circumstances,” said 
Muriel. “ He may have entered the engagement 
impulsively, and might have withdrawn from it, 
if the affair had not been made public, but he 
would never do so after the publicity you gave 
the matter.” 

“Ah, I see ; I had not thought of that !” cried 
Mrs. Langdon. “Well, I do sincerely admire 
him now.” 

“He felt very grateful towards her, too,” 
added Muriel. 

“Grateful!” exclaimed Mrs. Langdon with a 


The Woman Who Trusted 227 

start. “Do you mean that she helped him — that 
she advanced money ?” 

Muriel was silent, the blood mantling her 
brow. She had said more than she intended, but 
it had been only through her intense desire to 
justify Wilmot. 

“Ah, how contemptible!” cried Mrs. Lang- 
don. “I see the whole thing now. She resorted 
to her old trick of using her dead husband’s earn- 
ings, to promote her—” 

“I did not say that,” interrupted the girl. 

“I know you did not, my dear ! ” smiled Mrs. 
Langdon, patting Muriel’s hand. “ I discovered 
it myself. I remember now I did hear that Mr. 
Burian was short of funds and could get no one 
to accept his stories. Poor fellow ! and I have 
been holding him up to ridicule.” 

Dorothea rose. “ I see your friends looking 
for you,” she ended. “I know I am keeping 
you.” Mrs. Langdon went back to the “Lady in 
Brown” and opened her notebook, but her fingers 
trembled. She broke the point of her pencil. 

“I am no earthly good when I am angry,” 
she said to herself. “ I shall simply have to see 
that woman before I can write a line or feel at all 
like myself. Poor girl ! What a lady she is, and 
how she does love him ! I have been cruel — 
really cruel.” 

15 — Woman Who Trusted 


CHAPTER XXX. 


| WAS afraid I’d find Mr. Burian here,” Mrs. 
1 Langdon remarked as she sat down in Mrs. 
Sennett’s drawing-room twenty minutes later. 
Her cheeks were flushed from a rapid cab-drive, 
and she looked younger than usual. 

“No, I hardly expect him,” answered Mrs. 
Sennett languidly. “He used to -come every 
afternoon about this time, until — ” 

Mrs. Sennett’s hesitation was just long enough 
for her visitor to interpolate an ending to her 
remark. 

“Until you became engaged ! Significant, 
isn’t it?” 

Mrs. Sennett was in the act of sitting down 
on an ottoman near Mrs. Langdon. She finished 
the movement with a drop of at least a foot. 
Her diamond ear-rings swung wildly to and fro. 

“What do you mean, Dolly?” she asked. 

“For gracious sake don’t call me Dolly! I 
can’t stand it from women, besides I have come 
to have it out with you.” Mrs. Langdon thrust 
the end of her parasol into the ear of a tiger- 
skin, and leaned on it. 

“To have it out with me?” 

228 


The Woman Who Trusted 229 

“Yes, the whole business of your engage- 
ment to that boy. The cowardly part I took in it 
has so effected my nerves and conscience that I 
am all done up. I have discovered that Burian 
and Miss Fairchild are old sweethearts, and that 
with your silly craze for Fauntleroy lovers and 
my love for sensational articles and tendency to 
vituperative spite, they have been parted. She is a 
noble young woman, and he is a man with a 
future, but your engagement to him has broken 
her heart, and blocked his progress/’ 

“Blocked his progress!” gasped Mrs. Sen- 
nett, quivering from head to foot, a blended light 
of fear and anger in her eyes. 

“Yes, King and Burton are holding back his 
book because of the publicity of the whole thing. 
I happen to know’ that.” 

Mrs. Sennett rose to her feet and stood erect. 

“Dorothea Langdon, be careful what you 
say!” she blurted out. “You have already taken 
too many liberties with my name and character. 
Mr. Burian asked me to marry him of his ow r n 
free will, and — ” 

“ How could he do otherwise, with that obliga- 
tion hanging over him, and your prating about 
your loneliness, breaking heart, and all the rest 
of that sickening twaddle?” 


230 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ Obligation ?” repeated Mrs. Sennett slowly 
and softly, as if afraid of her own voice. 

“ Yes, you know you advanced money to him; 
you needn’t deny it!” 

“ Who told you that ?” 

“I don’t care to say,” replied Mrs. Langdon. 

“ He has paid me every cent I ever loaned 
him,” said Mrs. Sennett, struggling into a show 
of indignation. “ I presume you will publish a 
statement that he was bought, as you did when 
Mr. Printup and I were engaged.” 

“I’ll publish nothing that will harm you if 
you’ll be sensible,” said Mrs. Langdon. “You 
may as well listen to me, you know, for I have 
made up my mind to gain my point.” 

Mrs. Sennett summoned up the courage to 
point dramatically towards the door. 

“You’d better go, Mrs. Langdon,” she said. 
“ I have heard quite enough.” 

“But I really am not through with you,” 
calmly said the member of the Woman’s Press 
Club, and she made a thrust at the glass eye of 
the tiger-head by way of emphasis. “The truth 
* is, we are both in a contemptible mess, unworthy 
of women of your age and my experience. Now, 
if you will listen to me, I will show you how we 
can both get out gracefully.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 231 

Mrs. Sennett confessed her defeat when her 
extended arm sank slowly to her side. 

“ I don’t follow you,” she said. 

“ I am weary of being rough on human be- 
ings,” said Mrs. Langdon, with a half smiling 
look at her weak sister. “ People are beginning 
to say my articles have their origin only in envy 
and spite. It is detrimental to my ambition, and 
I really dislike to contemplate what I shall have 
to rake up and say about you if you defy me in 
this. Without boasting, I could make your name 
a street-corner and house-hold joke from Maine to 
California.” 

Mrs. Sennett sank back on her ottoman. 
She was panting as if she had scrubbed a flight 
of stairs. 

“ What do you want of me ?” she asked, in 
utter helplessness. 

“ The simplest thing in the world,” was the 
reply. “All you will have to do will be to write 
Mr. Burian that you have thought the matter 
over, and decided that the disparity in your ages 
makes it advisable for you to break off the en- 
gagement.” 

“ Your plan is to force me to do this ?” 

“You were forced to give up ‘ Printy,’ you 
know, and what credit did you ever derive from 
that?” 


232 The Woman Who Trusted 

Mrs. Sennett squirmed on the ottoman. 

“ But what you have already said in print has 
done Mr. Burian the injury, if injury has been 
done,” she ventured. 

“ If the engagement is broken, I can retract 
what I have said,” continued Mrs. Langdon. “I 
have never taken back-water in my life, but for 
the sake of this young couple and their happiness, 
I am willing, for once, to acknowledge that I had 
been misinformed in regard to the engagement. 
Along with this statement, I should give him such 
a booming mention as a writer, that no one 
would, for a moment, credit the report that such 
a man had thought seriously of marrying a 
woman like — well, anybody for her money.” 

Mrs. Sennett rested her elbows on her knees 
and buried her face in her hands. For a moment 
neither spoke, then Mrs. Sennett looked up. 

“You have misjudged me all along,” she said 
with a sudden firmness that surprised the visitor. 
“I know I have seemed a fool, Mrs. Langdon; 
and because I made such an idiot of myself with 
Mr. Printup you thought I was going to do the 
same again. You must hear me out. I am de- 
termined not to be misunderstood, and to lay 
part of the blame at your door, too.” 

“At my door !” Mrs. Langdon sneered aloud. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


233 


“Yes, at your door !” I acknowledge I did en- 
joy having Mr. Burian come and talk over his 
hopes. It was like going over the best part of 
my youth again, and besides I was longing for a 
chance to aid him materially. I confess I led him 
on to proposing, and that he did it in an impulsive 
moment, but as God is my Lord and Master, 
Mrs. Langdon, I was not going to bind him to it. 
I should have shown him the futility of it that very 
afternoon if you had not burst in upon us and 
roused the worst side of my nature by your keen 
ridicule in his presence. You drove me to the 
announcement of the engagement. I was nearly 
dead with shame and mortification when I saw 
your article the next morning and knew the world 
was stamping me again with that old weakness 
for which it has lashed me in the face a million 
times. I was tempted then to boldly fight it out 
— to hold Mr. Burian to his thoughtless proposal, 
but I was going to release him this very day. I 
talked with him about it the last time he was here 
and made up my mind to bury my foolish pride 
and release him, but oh ! you made it so hard — so 
very hard for a woman, Mrs. Langdon — a woman 
who was once as popular with men as I was, when 
all Newport — ” 

The speaker covered her face and began to 


cry. 


234 


The Woman Who Trusted 


Mrs. Langdon, leaned forward, as stiff and 
still as the wall behind her. 

“I see it all now,” she said. “Yes, I see 
it plainly, Mrs. Sennett. Nine proud women out 
of ten would have done as you have under the 
same circumstances. Yes, it was all due to my 
spite — my venomous pen, and I feel as if I can 
never be forgiven or regain my self-respect.” 

She stood up and with an incongruous glance 
looked down on the sobbing woman. 

“You have been more generous than I, Mrs. 
Sennett,” she faltered. “You have not pried into 
my heart as I have into yours. If you had you 
might have discovered the cause of all my ridicule. 
It was all due to the fact, Mrs. Sennett, that I, 
too, am growing old. Men don’t care for me as 
they once did. They follow me now for puffs — 
advertisement — that’s all. Now you understand. 
In your conduct I saw what I was coming to.” 

Mrs. Sennett rose to her feet, and the two 
women stood facing each other. “You are a real 
good woman, Dolly,” said Mrs. Sennett, “and I 
shall always love you — now.” The newspaper 
woman drew her wraps about her. 

“ I shall set the whole thing right to-morrow,” 
she said. “ I know how to do it — let that be my 
apology. I write better, than I talk, besides I feel 
like crying. Good-bye.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


r T'HE following morning Wilmot received this 
* communication from Mrs. Sennett : 

“My dear Mr. Burian: 

“ Mrs. Langdon has brought me to my senses 
with one of her straight talks. For some time 
the truth has been dawning on me that the dis- 
parity in our ages renders us unsuited to each 
other, but I was simply too weak and foolish to 
admit the truth to myself. I see, too, that you 
would simply never consent to live on my means, 
and situated as we both are, it would be hard to 
effect a compromise that would be agreeable. I 
love travel, luxurious surroundings, and every- 
thing money can secure, but your pride would 
keep you from enjoying these things with me. 
The whole affair was a mistake, and I hope you 
will release me from the engagement. Dorothea 
has agreed to straighten the matter out, by ac- 
knowledging in the Advance that she was mis- 
informed, and that there is nothing between us 
except friendship. I hope you won’t object to 
this ‘white lie’ for it will do away with the gossip 
quicker than anything else. I have a letter from 
my sister in San Francisco begging me to visit her 
and I shall leave to-morrow. Perhaps you’d bet- 
ter not call again.” 

Wilmot did not read the letter through, then, 
but dropped it on his table, and turned to a win- 
dow. “Free! Free!” he exclaimed. “Thank 

23s 


236 


The Woman Who Trusted 


God, I am actually a free man, with the world — 
the whole world before me.” 

Obeying an uncontrollable impulse to feel the 
expanse of limitless space above him, he put on 
his hat and went down for a walk. Passing a 
news-stand on the corner he caught sight of a copy 
of the Advance and purchased it. Mrs. Langdon’s 
article was there ; he saw his name in bold letters 
among the headlines. She had written beautifully, 
and so plausibly that its veracity could not have 
been questioned by anyone. This was followed 
by a few words in Mrs. Sennett’s favor, and a 
column of enthusiastic praise of Wilmot as a 
writer of rare ability and promise. Wilmot walked 
on and sat down in Madison Square, conscious now 
of but one desire, that Muriel Fairchild should at 
once see the article, understand Mrs. Langdon’s 
motive in writing it, and rejoice with him. 

For one instant the possibility of eventually 
winning Muriel flashed into his mind, but he tried 
to subdue it. He did not want to meet her now; 
he really hoped he should not see her till the 
present sensation had passed out of the memory 
of everyone. Yes, he would avoid her now for 
awhile at least, as persistently as before. People 
should not have the slightest cause to connect her 
name with his, after the publicity into which his 
thoughtlessness had brought him. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

AA7ELL, what do you think of that?” said 
* V Richard Soul to the senior member of 
the firm who had entered the office, reading the 
Advance. 

“I’in afraid we have treated the young man 
with undue haste — in fact, pretty shabbily,” an- 
swered Mr. King. “I confess it was my fault. I 
am an old fogy and I needn’t deny it.” 

“What do you think we ought to do about 
it ? ” asked Soul. 

Mr. King met the question with another. 

“What excuse did you give for the postpone- 
ment ? ” 

“ None at all.” 

“And what sort of reply did you get from 
him ? ” 

“ None at all.” 

“ Good ! I like his pluck. I have just re-read 
his book. It is great ! I like his style. I was 
just thinking he would make our paper a good 
London correspondent.” 

The manager started in surprise. 

“I had not thought of that, but I believe you 
are right. It wouldn’t take such a chap long to 
get into harness over there.” 


237 


238 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“ Do you suppose he could be had ? ” 

“ I think he would jump at it. Frank Harrison 
told Lester he was really seeking a position.” 

Mr. King deliberated a moment, then, as if 
relieved, he said : 

“Write to him to call, and talk the matter 
over ; he may not care to leave America, but we 
can make him an offer. How soon can you get 
his book under way ? ” 

“Immediately, I have just been talking to 
the foreman.” 

Mr. King laughed. 

“ Oh, you were — so you thought, we ought to 
be expeditious ?” 

“I think it would be a good time to launch 
him. Everything that is said will now be in his 
favor, and Mrs. Langdon’s article will prepare the 
critics for something beyond the average.” 

That afternoon Wilmot called in response to 
Soul’s telegram. The manager was suavely 
polite. 

“ I wanted to see you about the publication of 
your book,” he said. “We are sorry for the 
delay, but it was unavoidable.” 

“ It really makes no difference,” replied the 
author. “If you do not care to use it, I will take 
the manuscript away.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 239 

“Oh, it wasn’t that!” hastily corrected the 
manager ; “we have already given the book to 
our printer, and booming announcements have 
gone to the newspapers all over the country. 
I sent for you to consult you about the title page, 
the quality of paper, the size and general style 
of the book. We study to please an author as 
well as his readers. You see, we want you to be 
one of us, and hope you’ll give us the right to 
bring out your next book.” 

“I can’t do that,” answered Wilmot, firmly. 

“You can not?” The note of surprise in 
Soul’s voice was very distinct. 

“ I shall make no such promise to any one,” 
declared Wilmot. 

The manager stirred restlessly in his chair. 

“You mean you would refuse to allow us to 
handle your next novel ? ” 

“If I write another, yes.” 

“I see,” said Soul, “you are blaming us for 
the delay.” 

“ Not at all ; you were only looking after 
your interests, I want to look out for mine. In 
the future, I shall not contract with any firm that 
is likely to withhold my work from the public 
because of any newspaper report about my 
private affairs.” 


240 The Woman Who Trusted 

The manager shrugged his shoulders and 
fingered his paper-weight nervously. He touched 
the button of an electric call-bell. 

“Tell Mr. King to step here,” he said to the 
office-boy. 

Mr. King came in, and shook hands with 
Wilmot. 

“ Mr. Burian is a little too much for me,” 
Soul admitted with a smile. “ He feels hurt 
about our delay and ascribes it to that unpleasant 
rumor.” 

Mr. King flushed to the roots of his white 
hair. 

“ No one is so much to blame as I am,” he 
said in an embarrassed tone. “I confess I did 
not like to bring out a man right on the heels of 
such a — well, such a sensation as that. I am 
sorry to have caused you inconvenience, and am 
ready to make all the amends possible.” 

It was the gray head, the quavering voice 
that appealed to Wilmot’s better nature. 

“ Don’t say anything more about it,” he said. 
“ When I have written another book you shall 
see it, and we will talk it over.” 

“ Good,” exclaimed Mr. King, laying his 
hand on Wilmot’s shoulder. “ You and I shall 
yet be friends.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 241 

He turned to Soul. “ Have you mentioned 
the London idea to him?” he asked. 

The manager shook his head and entered on 
a rather lengthy explanation. 

“It would be just the thing for you,” broke 
in Mr. King impulsively, when Soul had concluded. 
“We own the Literary Day you know, and need 
a regular correspondent over there. The salary 
is not great, but it would cover your expenses, 
and you would have ample time for other work.” 

“ I can think of nothing I should like more.” 
admitted Wilmot,* and then his face clouded. 
“I am afraid it would be hard for me to keep 
going until I get established over there. You see 
I have earned very little, so far.” 

“We can easily get round that,” said the old 
man. “We often make a payment of royalty in 
advance on a promising book, and we can easily 
give you two or three hundred on account.” 

“ Then I accept your offer,” answered Wilmot. 

“ Can you be ready to sail in a week? ” Mr. 
King asked, as he grasped Wilmot’s hand. 

“Easily,” was the reply. 

When Wilmot had gone, Mr. King looked 
into Soul’s office. “ I like him better than ever,” 
he said, smiling. “ He will do us credit over 
there — you can depend upon it!” 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


HAT evening Wilmot went up to Weyland’s 



* studio and told him of his good fortune. 
The artist was sitting in a reclining-chair smoking, 
and sprang up and extended his big hand. 

“ I congratulate you with all my heart, my 
boy/’ he exclaimed heartily. “I knew it would 
come. You see I did not listen to that nasty 
report about you wanting to marry for money. 
I saw too much ‘git there’ in that eye of yours 
to believe such rot. I feel like dancing myself 
to-night. I never felt so good before.” 

“Another big order?” questioned Wilmot, 
as he reclined on a lounge and lighted one of 
Weyland’s cigars. 

“Yes, the biggest to me that has come yet. 
It is an order from my little girl to come post haste 
to Boston. She says she can’t do without her 
old ‘ daddy ’ a bit longer. Louis wants me too. 
Oh, I’ll go, you may bank on that ! I have 
actually been so blue that I didn’t have to buy 
color for my sky-effects. But I’ll work when I’m 
with them again.” 

“ It looks like we are all going to leave,” said 
Wilmot. “ Harrison wants to move up town to 
get into a more stylish locality.” 


The Woman Who Trusted 


243 


“ Harrison ought to,” remarked the artist 
good naturedly. “He goes in for that sort of 
thing. I wish you were leaving with me.” 

“I can’t, I shall have a great deal to do before 
sailing,” replied Wilmot. 

“ I’m going to take that charming Miss Fair- 
child with me,” smiled Weyland, rising to get a 
match. 

Wilmot was in the shadow of the artist’s big 
body, which had intervened between him and the 
light from the piano lamp. 

“ What?” he exclaimed, unable to restrain his 
surprise. 

“Yes,” Weyland came back lighting a cigar. 
“Those girls have been exchanging letters since 
Aline left, and Miss Fairchild has promised to go 
with me over there for a stay of several weeks. 
I stopped in at the Galatin this afternoon. She 
will leave with me to-morrow.” 

After that Wilmot was silent for several min- 
utes then he rose and went down to his room and 
dressed to go out. He had decided to see Muriel 
at once. Her intended departure was excuse 
enough, even if any were needed. His heart 
was in his mouth all the way to the hotel. He 
sent up his card from the office and went into one 
of the private parlors to await her coming. 

j6— Woman Who Trusted 


244 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“At last,” she exclaimed, as she came in hold- 
ing out her hand. “I did hope I’d see you be- 
fore leaving. I am going to Boston to-morrow.” 

“So Weyland told me,” said Wilmot. “I felt 
that I must see you before you go, for I leave 
New York myself in a week.” 

For a moment the girl stared at him without 
speaking, then : 

“You are going away?” 

Then he told her of his appointment and 
early publication of his book.” 

Her face was fairly aglow. 

“I am so glad !” she exclaimed. “Now, your 
real day is dawning — the day you and I used to 
dream about. I can’t tell you how happy Mrs. 
Langdon’s article made me. The beauty of her 
account of Mr. Chester’s marriage first showed 
me what a good heart the woman has and her 
adroit retraction makes me love her. As soon as 
I read it, I went to her room and kissed her. She 
actually cried and presently told me all about her 
one love affair. It was like a beautiful story. It 
wasn’t with Mr. Langdon, either, but a young 
man she knew long before she was married. She 
told me you reminded her of him. Since Mrs. 
Sennett left and this article appeared everybody 
is laughing at the absurdity of the first report. 


The Woman Who Trusted 


245 


And now that Mrs. Sen nett has gone they are 
telling no end of good deeds of her. The girls 
in the house are dying to meet you.” 

The hours flew by. A hall clock struck 
eleven. 

“I want to write to you if you will let me,” 
said Wilmot as he rose to leave. “May I?” 

“If you did not I should hardly know how to 
estimate your friendship. I am going to believe 
in your future, too, more than ever.” 

“I shall hope for more than literary success,” 
some day he said, significantly. She went with 
him to the door— and when they shook hands 
they both choked up and parted without a word. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


N HIS arrival in London, Wilmot took 



lodgings in the vicinity of Bedford Square, 
and wrote and read in the library of the British 
Museum. As correspondent for the Literary 
Day it was necessary for him to become ac- 
quainted with the leading writers and artists of 
London. At first he received only a lukewarm 
reception, but six weeks after his arrival, his book 
being out, the English reviews were enthusias- 
tically proclaiming him the latest American 
success, his novel having produced a furore at 
its first appearance, on both sides of the Atlantic. 
And then he found himself in demand — a lion, a 
species of creation he had never admired, and 
liked less now than ever. 

He had frequent letters from Muriel and 
Chester. Chester kept him posted on the news 
regarding their old associates. In one of his 
letters he wrote : 

“Aline and I of late have seen a good deal 
of Muriel. She is more popular than ever and 
just as unspoiled. You’d better look to your 
interest. Frank Harrison comes over to see her 
every time she visits us. She has remodeled him. 
He now places the impoverished aristocracy of 


246 


The Woman Who Trusted 247 

the South above the gilded Four Hundred. If I 
am any reader of signs, he’s a goner. Aline says 
he is not capable of loving any woman deeply. 
She doesn’t believe Muriel cares a fig for him — 
though Aline does whisper certain other suspic- 
ions, which, as a dutifully married man shall go 
no further than where they lodged in my head. 

“Muriel happened to be with us when the 
‘ Lighthouse 9 (a name Chester had given to a 
most exclusive New York review) came contain- 
ing that stunning criticism of your book, quoting, 
also, the praise of the Academy . We all read the 
article together and duly rejoiced. I have never 
seen such a light in a human face as I then saw 
in Muriel’s. She wouldn’t trust herself to speak 
for several minutes, and then said something so 
ridiculously irrelevant that Aline and I had to 
laugh at her. Aline says she is the finest girl 
ever made, and I’d have you know that my wife 
has never made a mistake in sizing up a woman 
— or a man, either, as she once proved to the 
satisfaction of all who knew her. She — Muriel — 
won’t talk about herself, and I venture she didn’t 
write you of her recent offer. She was tendered 
the leading soprano part in the Lyceum Opera 
Company at a large salary, but she refused be- 
cause her parents object to the stage. She will 
sing in choirs and select concerts, and that will 
bring her glory and boodle enough. You need 
no longer fear gossip about the Sennett affair. 
It has completely died out. No one now couples 
your name with hers — thanks to Dorothea, who 
is constantly printing helpful squibs in your be- 
half.” 


248 


The Woman Who Trusted 


The following summer, while making a short 
stay in Paris, Wilmot met Chester on the Boule- 
vard St. Michael. 

“I had no idea you were here,” exclaimed 
Wilmot. “Why didn’t you write me you were 
coming over?” 

“I didn’t know it myself till the day we sailed,” 
replied Chester. “Weyland had some tickets 
given him by the owner of the London , , and 
Aline and I decided at a moment’s notice to use 
them. She might not have come, but Muriel was 
booked for the same boat, and really needed a 
chaperon.” 

“Oh, she came, too!” ejaculated Wilmot, “but 
she did not write me.” 

“ She told me she had written to your London 
address. In fact, we looked for you at the station.” 

“ I missed the letter,” said Wilmot. “I have 
been here several days.” 

“We were all very much disappointed at not 
seeing you. When you did not turn up, we sup- 
posed the letter had gone astray. I went to your 
lodgings and could learn nothing but that you had 
left without giving your address.” 

“I did not want anyone in London to know 
where I had gone,” explained Wilmot, regretfully. 
“There are some newspaper men who watch my 


The Woman Who Trusted 249 

movements and publish erroneous statements 
about my plans.” 

“I see,” answered Chester, pausing and fac- 
ing his friend after they had crossed the Seine on 
the Pont St. Michel , ” but we are losing valuable 
time. The ladies want to see you ; we have 
taken tickets for the night train to Geneva. We 
don’t want to spend another hot night in Paris. 
Come with us — really you must! We* simply 
won’t take a refusal.” 

Wilmot caught his breath. He really had 
been thinking of an excursion in that direction. 

“ I have an important appointment herein the 
morning,” he said, “but I could take the train to- 
morrow night — that is, if I shan’t be in the way.” 

“In the way? You blockhead ! Why, Aline 
and I have been longing for some one to look 
after Muriel, and you will do beautifully. Frank 
Harrison hinted right and left for an invitation, 
but Muriel wouldn’t listen to his coming.” 

“ She doesn’t really like him, then ?” 

“ No, and it looks as if the fellow’s very per- 
sistency has spoiled what little chance he might 
have had. He bores her frightfully. One night 
after he had stayed very late Aline and I teased 
her unmercifully about him. She stood it for a 
long time, and then flew up and said she only liked 


250 


The Woman Who Trusted 


him for one thing, and that was because he had 

o y 

introduced you to your publishers.” 

“Did she say that — did she really, Chester?” 

Chester nodded, as he began to write on the 
back of his card. 

“ Here is our address. It is a delightfully 
quiet and select pension in the Quai des Eaux 
Vives — right on the lake. I shall keep an apart- 
ment for you. Now come and help me get them 
to the train.” 

Wilmot looked at his watch. 

“I am afraid I have not the time to spare, I 
am awfully sorry,” he said. “I have a pressing 
engagement to dine with some English friends at 
seven, and have now hardly time to dress.” 

“Well, you won’t fail to join us at Geneva 
day after to-morrow morning,” said Chester. 

“I shall leave to-morrow night sure,” promised 
Wilmot. And the two friends parted. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

HESTER met Wilmot at the door of the 
pension in Geneva, and actually threw his 
arms about him, much to the amusement of Marie, 
the maid, who had come out to direct the placing 
of the luggage. 

“ I am awfully glad you got here all right,” 
he cried. “Aline shouted with delight, and Muriel 
would have joined in if she hadn’t been afraid 
we’d tease her.” 

“Where are they now?” Wilmot asked as 
they were entering the salon on the next floor. 

“Gone to the flower-market,” grinned Chester. 
“ They intended to decorate your room. We had 
no idea you would get here for an hour yet. I was 
going to meet you at the station. How do you 
like Geneva?” 

“It is beautiful,” answered Wilmot. “I got 
my first view of Mt. Blanc as we drove up, and 
the lake is ideal.” 

“Glad you came, eh?” 

“Decidedly.” 

The ladies returned twenty minutes later, 
their arms filled with flowers. Wilmot was in the 
dining-room at dejeuner with Chester beside him 

251 


252 The Woman Who Trusted 

asking rapid questions about literary matters in 
London, and now and then addressing a labored 
remark to Marie in most wretched French. 

Mrs. Chester was the first to enter, and Wil- 
mot was glad it was so, for it gave him a moment 
to collect himself before facing Muriel. 

' “ I am glad you kept your promise,” said Mrs. 

Chester. “After we heard you would join us 
to-day, it seemed a long time to wait.” 

“I have been in special need of you, Burian,” 
said Chester with a droll look at his wife. “I 
want to prove by you that my French is comme it 
faut , as they say over here. They tried to leave 
it to Marie, but they could not speak well enough 
to make her comprehend the point under dispute.” 

“That’s a fib!” said his wife, going behind 
him and playfully pulling his hair. “I don’t pre- 
tend to speak it well, but Muriel is simply a mar- 
vel. In Paris they all said she spoke like a native ; 
her intonation is so soft and musical.” 

“ Mats non , pas du tout /” exclaimed the one 
complimented, as she entered the room. “Mr. 
Burian knows I have had no opportunity to ac- 
quire any tongue except Georgia dialect. How 
do you do?” she asked, giving Wilmot her hand 
cordially. We are so glad you came. It makes 
me feel like being at home again — my real, sho’ 


The Woman Who Trusted 


253 


'nough home — to see you. And — and you are 
really quite a stranger/’ 

Wilmot stood almost speechless before her. 
She seemed to have become a hundred times 
more beautiful than when he had last seen her. 
A dozen replies crowded one upon another in his 
brain, and when he finally spoke his words seemed 
weak and inadequate. 

“I am glad to see you,” he said. “I was 
lucky to run upon Chester. If I could have got- 
ten away from Paris yesterday I should have come 
down with you.” 

“They had seized his luggage for a board 
bill,” said Chester with a straight face, and every 
body laughed. 

“I found it awfully hard to pass the time after 
finding out that you were so near,” said Wilmot, 
looking at Muriel. 

“ How nice of you !” said that young lady, 
sitting down and beginning to arrange her 
flowers. “And Paris so full of attractions for 
men especially.” 

“For some men, perhaps,” answered Wilmot; 
“ but not for all. The general lack of seriousness 
and habit of constant merrymaking on the part 
of the Parisians make most foreigners realize 
that there is all the more work to do elsewhere.” 


254 


The Woman Who Trusted 


“I am so glad you think that,” said Mrs. 
Chester with a mischievous glance at her hus- 
band. “It is unusual to hear such sentiments 
from men, but you are an unmarried man.” 

“I don’t feel at all as if I were hit,” laughed 
Chester. 

That evening after dinner, they all sat on the 
balcony which jutted out from the salon and over- 
looked the street and the lake. 

In the lake, rose a tall fountain, the jet and 
wide-spreading spray of which were illuminated 
by colored lights. The Jar din Anglais was at the 
end of the street, and from it, and the cafe 
chantant beyond, came strains of music. The 
surface of the lake was dotted with the red, 
green and blue lanterns of row-boats, and now 
and then an excursion steamer, like a moving 
pavilion, glided past. 

“Now, you must sing for us, dear,” suggested 
Mrs. Chester, touching Muriel on the shoulder. 

Without a word Muriel complied, stepping 
through the open window into the salon, and sit- 
ting down at the piano. 

“Mon coeur, souvre "a ta voixf was the song 
she selected from a pile of music on the piano, 
and it vividly and painfully recalled the only oc- 
casion on which Wilmot had ever heard it. Dur- 


The Woman Who Trusted 


255 


ing the last stanza Mrs. Chester rose and softly 
left the balcony. She was followed by her hus- 
band. Finding himself alone. Wilmot joined 
Muriel at the piano, just as she was ^singing the 
last words. She turned on the stool and glanced 
in a startled way at the vacant chairs on the 
balcony. 

“I declare,” she said, “they showed very little 
appreciation to leave like that.” 

“I think they did it out of consideration for 
me,” said Wilmot, feeling his heart sink as he 
realized the importance of what he had determined 
to say. 

“I don’t understand,” Muriel began, but the 
expression of her eyes belied her words as they 
fell under his ardent, almost apprehensive gaze. 

“I think,” he said, “that they saw the awful 
suspense I am in and thought it would be 
better for me to ascertain my fate at once. 
Since that miserable affair last summer I have 
hardly dared hope to win your love. The truth 
is, I have never been able to keep from loving 
you. Although I have not seen you for a year, 
you have been in my thought — in my heart — every 
moment since — every single moment, Muriel.” 

He had taken her hand, and the fact that she 
did not at once withdraw it gave him hope. 


256 The Woman Who Trusted 

“Is it really true that you love me ?” she fal- 
tered. 

“As I never imagined a man could love,” 
said he simply. 

“I knew it, but I wanted to hear you say the 
words,” she said, flushing. 

“Then you still care for me?” 

“Yes; I love you.” 

Strong as he was, he was afraid to trust his 
voice to utterance at that moment. In lieu of a 
reply he only pressed her hand and led her 
back to their seats outside. 


Ten minutes later their friends emerged from 
the little reception-room at the far end of the bal- 
cony and approached. 

“I want to congratulate you both,” began 
Chester, laughing. “I — ” 

“Why, Louis!” broke in Mrs. Chester, “you 
ought to be ashamed of yourself.” 

“I congratulate you on having the best seats 
on the balcony,” finished Chester, suppressing 
another laugh as he glanced towards the fountain. 
“ From here you have a clear view of the Jar din 
Anglais and the lake; we could scarcely 
thing from the other end,” 


see a 


The Woman Who Trusted 


257 


“You can congratulate me on more than that, 
Chester,” said Wilmot, falling into his friend’s 
mood, “and if I hadn’t met you in Paris the other 
day I might — ” 

“Not have had such a good seat on the bal- 
cony,” interpolated Chester. “Aline, kiss me; 
I feel like getting married over again !” 

But Mrs. Chester was kissing Muriel. 







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